


Poison, Ale and Aloe

by orphan_account



Category: game of thrones
Genre: F/M, the hound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6750424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandor made peace with the fact he was going to die, and maybe he was a little selfish in asking the little Stark to end him. But he knew he wasn't going to make it, unless there was a maester hiding around. Well, suppose there was? A world in which Sandor Clegane lives and you get yourself tangled in a game bigger than you.</p><p>[PENDING POTENTIAL REWRITE?]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oil

**Author's Note:**

> [[Every trigger that applies to Game of Thrones applies here. I Own Nothing. It's based off my understanding of the show, and nothing else. Starts at Sandor's off-screen "death" where Arya Stark leaves him to die of his injuries, and then will veer into violently AU territory. Author hasn't read the books but does a little research. Don't hate this too much. I just adore Sandor and I'm a sap for romance. Dedicated to my buddyguy Goofers <3 ]]

 

**Chapter One: Oil**

  
The heat hit you first, it wasn't that it was an amazingly hot day - the skies were clear and the sun wasn't bleating, but the combined weight of all your items on your back, the weapon you could barely use, and the heaviness of the cotton clothes that itched from their poor quality, it may as well have been scorching. With a scowl, you wiped some sweat off your brow. The events of the recent past hung over you, and it was though each passing day of your pilgrimage into nothingness made the weight on your shoulders heavier, because in truth there was nobody waiting for you, and you had no boat to even so much as row back home to Essos, however suicidal that may have been, it couldn't be any worse than fleeing from the Boltons. They were determined to take and retain their hold on the North, an exercise in pointlessness - you hoped, but the horrors witnessed in the span of days would be enough to keep you awake in your nightmares. Ramsay Bolton's cruelty was enough to make the horror stories of Joffrey Baratheon seem like the whines of a mewling child. Now, you didn't have the pleasure of meeting the short-lived horror itself, Joffrey - you had no reason to, as beautiful as King's Landing sounded - Poet Surrot had referred to it as a haven of lies, and memoirs of nobles rarely had praise for such a place beyond it's beauty and atmosphere.. However, the legends had reached even your ears - and you made a point of avoiding the gossip when you could help it because it kept you free from political messes that were far above your station in life, but witnessing the conquer of Winterfell had been enough for you to know that Ramsay was the face of pure naked evil. The worst kind of man.

  
  
So you fled, wisely.

  
  
You were an expendable woman who'd committed an unforgivable crime - lying to the nobility of the Boltons, now, that wasn't too egregious on it's own, except that others had covered  _for you_ by omitting the truth of what you were. 

  
  
Never had you been so ashamed.

  
  
 _'Lord of Light, hear my plea, leave the Boltons far behind me. Lord of Light, in my misery, save me, guide me to allies. I beseech you to reward my worth. If you think me worthy, I beg of you, guide me home.'  
  
"-āeksio, _please," mumbling tiredly in your other tongue - High Valyrian, it was not as restricted to the nobility of Essos as one would assume. The Red Priests were easily privy to picking it up and learning it, and you can't say you were ever so thorough as your mother, who was fanatical in her worship, but she had always threatened to punish you terribly if she caught you speaking "bastard Valyrian," - low Valyrian, but if ever there was a time to pray and beseech R'hllor, it was now. Of all the Gods, R'hllor was the only one you'd ever known to impact the world with his touch, and....the less said about the Great Other, the better, but he had to exist too, there was no Light without Shadow, and death could be a lot of things, but it wasn't evil. Fear needed to be, so we knew what bravery was, and all that the Great Other represents may be something that humanity naturally shuns, but it needs to exist. You understood this at a young age and so, mother's threats of poor behaviour invoking the wrath of the Other was not something that terrified you like so many other things.  
  
'Mother.....'  there was a twinge of pain in your chest at the thought but, you ignored it and marched on decisively.   
  
The endless stretch of green plains seemed to just go on forever, and not for the first time, you wished you had a bloody horse. Putting a hand above your eyes to provide a small shadow cast over them and block the peeking sunbeams, a short gust of wind relieved you for the barest of moments. Heat was fine and all, but you were sweating from the gross amount of things you were carrying. You were not hardly a quilt-knitting, songstress lady but you were certainly no labourer. You were an intellectual. A scholar, back in Volantis - you would have been respected.  
  
  


It seemed Westeros was harsher to its women.  
  


  
" _Kill me!"_

  
  
You flinched at the noise, brandishing the light, short, steel sword shakily, turning around wildly. For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the small winds rising and whipping your hair past your ears.

  
  
Still, you didn't sheath your sword. You weren't much of a fighter, Gods, you had tried. but you were too small in the height for much. You were quick, but useless in heavy armour and only good for speed. One thing you had to thank her mother for at least - _'if you would prefer to bite the hands of Gods then you had best learn to raise your sword, for there is very few places for a woman of scholarly mind that isn't noble, and even then, few and you my dear, are still a Sand.'_  
  
Fighting arts still weren't a standard practice in Essos for women, though it was a lot less uncommon than it was in Westeros - with young girls all over Dorne and Essos as a whole -  looking up to the Martell's Sand Snakes, for a moment, you thought you could do such a thing, but your only real advantage was your speed from your smallness. In heavy armour you were useless and it was only pure luck that the fighting methods of the Free Cities were diverse and didn't favour throwing all of your weight behind your armour and crashing down warhammers into the faces of your enemies. You only shone with speed and small knives, things you could actually lift, or at range, the weapons of silence and speed that only the dishonourable assassin could benefit from. It was a little disappointing, but that was all the fighting technique you had.   
  
It was a miracle you hadn't died on the way to King's Landing, which, was your only realistic option to head to. There was no place at the Night's Watch for you, women couldn't even take the black, and you had no family there, and so it was little but a rest stop. You told none of them your name, you merely spoke High Valyrian and mentioned King's Landing and most assumed you had noble business, though your attire direly suggested otherwise, your beaten dress easily suggested handmaiden or... _something,_ but you didn't even know if the Boltons were bothering expending any force looking for you.   
  
  
You didn't want to find out.  
  
  
"Kill me!" there it was again, a masculine wail carried on the winds. You looked out at the blank plains, and slowly walked, guided by the ungainly begs. Approaching a large rock, you skidded down a slope - it was quite a drop for the unprepared, steel short-sword still brandished nervously.  
  
  
" _Kill me!"_  
  
  
It sounded so painfully pathetic that you winced, the area was too vast and empty from this standpoint for it to be a fake-out and bandit raid, not that you had anything they could use beyond ladies garters, books and ingredients. Five gold pieces hardly seemed like being worthy of stealing, even if it looked like you carried the world in that backpack, it was more or less just supplies to camp out and nothing of any particular worth.  
  
  


"Kill me," their voice was hoarse, had he been shouting for hours? The Vale had been not so far behind you, you had to have looped all over fucking Westeros by now or at least it felt like it. You didn't even known much of where you were headed beyond using a slightly weathered and maybe even dated map and a compass made of alloyed, worthless metals to guide the way when the stars could not.

  
  
Maybe the man had a horse tied up somewhere? But from the vast plains of nothing, you couldn't immediately spot one, and instantly, you shunned your own selfish thoughts. The man needed help from the sounds of it, so slowly you approached the rock, hesitating in sliding your small short-sword. When it didn't look like a trap, you did your best to stifle the noise of disgust. The man's leg was at a strange angle, the smell of blood hung loosely in the air - it was easier to smell now,  You didn't bother wiping the look of disgust off your face, but the tell-tale knight's armour had made you take pause. Knights didn't travel so far on their own did they? They travelled in scouting teams, right? Was he just abandoned, or was this some brutish form of hazing? Half his face turned against the rock and buried in his own matted hair. He looked like he needed a wash too.  
  
  
'Oh, oh God, his neck!" - it looked infected and was the cause for your curled lip. You'd seen worse but - but still. With a scowl, the backpack was dropped with a loud thud against the grass, forcing the disgraced knight to wrench open his eyes.   
  
  
"Oh, quit your cat's wail,"  
  
  
It had come out sterner than you meant it too, it was supposed to be gentle chiding, but nonetheless, it was said, a disproving cluck in the back of your throat. What kind of Knight allowed himself to be found in such a disgraceful position, begging for death? Yet there was a certain softness to your eyes, as the man's eye that faced you took in your stern pose, hands to hips, as though you might be slightly cross with the stranger.  
  
  
You weren't but, maybe you were just a little vicariously shamed on his behalf, and you'd spent the last hour contemplating your own fall from grace, it just seemed the natural mood to fall into.  
  
  
"This is no place to die,"  
  
  
The man didn't say anything at first, watching you slowly sheathe your weapon. There was confusion for a while, and nothing but pain belaboured breathing broke the silence between you. It was a staring contest, because he was fairly certain he was in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, and short of Arya sending help, which was extremely unlikely, as she left him to die, this had to be the dumbest luck or the strongest near-death induced hallucination.  
  
  
He turned his head fully, and leaned to the back of it, and you'd flinched, and if you were a hallucination - the man would have easily preferred if you hadn't. His face wasn't particularly noteworthy to you, you just hadn't expected the burns.  
  
  
The many, many burns.  
  
  
Someone fucked this guy up  _badly._  
  
  
Closer inspection showed they were not at all new, for all you knew, they could have been years old, and he seemed to be too busy trying to figure out if you were real to tell you to stop staring at him so critically and rudely. At least that didn't need any tending to, from the looks of things, but you'd have to wipe some of the dirt off of his face to be sure. Hesitantly, you dropped onto your rear in the grass, next to your bag, and began to pick through it as though the man wasn't dangerously close to expiring. In truth, he didn't seem like he was, he still had a decent colour about him, but the desperation in his tone and gravity of the injuries were a mark of death if he had simply been left to the wilds.   
  
  
How did such a big looking man get taken down? Was whoever did it, still there? Well, the guy had picked the rock as a hiding spot at any rate, provided he stopped begging for death, it was an okay place to lay low.  
  
  
"Yes good, hush hush good Ser," you murmured, picking through the bag until you found a clean looking linen. The neck wound, though infected, looked as though it had been recently cleaned, You folded it into a neat square and dipped some water from the waterskin at your side onto it and began to wipe at the man's face, taking dirt off with it. Your touch felt so real, that his weak, large arm raised and somewhat clenched at your long-sleeved arm.  
  
  
What a weak grip for a man so large, it was only then that the urgency took you. He was worse than he looked.  
  
  
"Oh no, oh dear, oh Ser," you rambled, suddenly feeling like an arse, here you were, taking your time, not bothering to curtail your tongue for the sake of a dying man, when you could be helping. Cursing your own behaviour in high Valyrian, you looked at him, his face cleaned. This time, with preparedness, you didn't react to the roughness of his burns, now that you'd expected it  "You're in a terrible way,"   
  
  
The man finally said something other than 'kill me' and breaking his silence since seeing you.  
  
  
"No shit,"   
  
  
You pursed your lips, but he could be forgiven for being so snappish, you had been no better, and the man was beyond wounded. You rolled your sleeves up, exposing slim but strong arms, pushing hair back out of your own face with a no-nonsense expression.   
  
  
"Infected wound, several mites from the jugular," upon peering as close as you could get, practically breathing all over him. It wasn't like he could do much to protest "-partially removed ear, surface injury, severed," you mumbled, digging for more clean linens to clean it. Did whatever hurt his neck, hurt his ear? How did an animal even get to a man as tall as him?   
  
"Broken leg, possible fractures, not sure where, probable contusions," it was at this point, you were compelled to ask him if he heard a 'crack' noise when he hurt it, and ask what in the name of God had happened?   
  
"Muscle weakness," - he was struggling to focus his eyes on you, or even keep them open, he looked so fatigued up close "-fatigue,"  
  
You passed your waterskin to him and began to tip the contents down his throat, the coolness of the water woke him up, and a low rumble escaped his stomach.  
  
Add hunger to the list.  
  
Some part of you felt like you were going to regret what you did next, but you dug around for some garlic seasoned bread loaf you had pilfered on your way out of Winterfell, and the man was so tired it seemed he could barely shovel it into his mouth, but he scarfed the whole thing like it had been rare game and sighed with some relief, crumbs in his facial hair.  
  
 _'Attractive'_  
  
  
"I need to take your armour off," you said after a moment, before cringing at the tired and confused look the man shot you. "Ser, I need to look at your leg, and I need to cauterize your neck wound,"  
  
The man flinched, he knew what cauterize meant, just from a good guess and what Arya had offered to do, only he had much less energy to protest this time the way he had with her, but the flash of fear came into his eyes, mingled with anger at the suggestion.  
  
 **"No fire!"** he snarled. You flinched at his sudden aggression, but gave him a look of disdain. It didn't take a genius to figure out why - burnt guy didn't want more burns, whatever burned him probably left him with a genuine fright for it, but you were not about to entertain the medicinal advice of a stubborn dying idiot over yourself, who had actual training.  
  
  
"Well I've got nothing to sew it up with," you said waspishly.  
  
  
"You ain't a maester," the man sneered out, still in protest. He was thankful, he really, really was, but he was not about to let some stranger shove fire on him, he didn't even let Arya do it, so why would he let this weirdo?  You flinched, the memories of your recent disgrace came to mind at his words, but you brushed it to one side. He didn't know what he was saying, you rationalized. On top of his injuries, he could have been hit on the head, and he was also fatigued and underfed, clearly. "Women ain't maesters,"  
  
  
"Well," you said, eyes narrowing at him "-for someone whose well learned in earth sciences and body sciences, short of growing a cock and getting my shiny badge of Maesterdom again, I'm the best you're going to get. Out of every uneducated person who could have stumbled on your sorry arse, you're in the best possible hands,"   
  
To prove your point, you withdrew a morter and pestle from your back and some ingredients, and began crushing them. It was just some purple flowers and some hallucinogen grapes, but with a certain kind of thistle, it could brew a poison, but with the right kind of herb, could be a powerful sleeping and paralyzing agent. Luckily, the desired herb was easily synthesized from nearby weeds, it wouldn't paralyze effectively or last nearly as strong, or potently, as if you had the real thing, but, it would do.  
  
  
"You know you're awfully picky for a man shouting for someone to kill him,"   
  
He didn't say anything after that, slowly regaining some energy and picking off his plating around his neck and shoulders, exposing how ratty his undershirt had become, which dipped low around his chest and some of his shoulders which had previously been plated over with his armour.  
  
  
"What is that?" he asked after the silence became untenable.   
  
  
"Pain relief," - the absolute look of joy mixed with disbelief washed over his face, the smile was genuine, and it looked strange on someone so intimidating. Good, but, strange. He couldn't really devour it fast enough, and he really didn't care if it would kill him, since he had begged for it not five moments ago prior, the taste was strange and it was like it had given him a sensation of cotton mouth, and the grapes crushed in were sour, but he felt his body easing, relaxing. His eyes felt heavy too, and the pain became a secondary thought, but mostly he was just tired, and wanted to sleep.  
  
  
 ** _S l e e p . . ._**  
\----  
  
  
You had done a really bastard thing.  
  
A shitty thing.  
  
Mysterious Ser was probably going to hate you whenever he woke up. Honestly, you were surprised (and relieved) that he didn't wake up in the process.  
  
Unfortunately for you, he woke up due to the extremely painful application of alcohol washing his neck (which was a precious waste of alcohol to you) and he could have clouted you over the head for it.   
A long, masculine " _Argh!"_ escaping his dry lips, eyes watering dangerously from pain. He was not a weak man, he managed to stay knocked out and hallucinating through the painful process of having a hot fiery stick shoved against his neck - twice - to successfully cauterize, but somehow, he couldn't stomach the cleaning. Or the amateur drug had worn off. It was usually enough to get you to sleep, but the louder noises had been known to wake you, it took approximately this much pain to pull the fatigued man out of his almost paralytic state. It was a testament to how strong he was, probably.  
  
  
"I'm sorry," you cringed immediately, you were hovered over him now, wrapping the clean linens around his neck loosely, just to sooth and keep the grime from the freshly cauterized wound. It had been smeared in a strange, mint coloured paste that smelled of paint, but the second you put it on your fingers and spread it over his neck, the "Argh" had melted into the noise of a low grumble, breathing heavily into your face. You at least had been allowed enough time to clear out your alchemical supplies before you had word that news of your lies about your gender status had reached the Boltons, who, while it was an open-secret during the Starks reign, for the sake of keeping your title of Maester in the Order of Maesters, they had called you Sir. But the Boltons were hungry to make an example of anyone, or hells, they could even pluck an innocent and flay without thought. You needn't give them a reason, so you quickly fled.   
  
You weren't so arrogant as to think you had importance, but you would get their court's attention, and for a bad reason. That would be enough. So you left, in suitable disgrace.  
  
  
"Did you....?" he was still breathing heavily now, trying to wake his body up and will it to move.  "Did you burn my neck?"  
  
  
Biting down on your lip, you nodded, the man looked scary when he was that mad, and if he had the strength, he'd have grabbed you by the throat proba---  
  
 _Ah!_  
  
He grabbed you by the shoulders instead, pulling you back against his forehead when you moved to lean back after applying the paste, he saw the flash of naked fear in your eyes when you were that close. A low, embarrassing squeak left the base of your throat that you probably couldn't replicate, even if you wanted to.  
  
" _Never. Do That. Again."_ he breathed - and boy, his breathe was foul. It smelled of the garlic bread you'd given him. Nodding hastily until he let you go, you quickly scooted away from his upper body, scooting over to his leg. The man wrinkled his nose a bit and looked down at himself, seeing his leg armour removed and his trouser material rolled up to his thighs. No wonder he was feeling cold. He was greeted by the sight of his own hairy leg, being held straight by several thick sticks acting as rods that had been bound in some structural attempt to keep his leg in a certain straight position. It took some stick-hunting on your part, Holding them there were strips of material wrapped several times over - which looked like a camper's blanket fur, and the kind of artful, complicated but strong series of complicated knots holding them all in rigid place looked to be like the kind you saw on ships, securing important things.   
  
He watched as you gingerly rolled his trouser leg down, your ears burning noticeably at the amount of liberties you had to take on the unconscious man - his leg armour cast to one side. There was an unreadable expression on his face as you poked the small firepit that Arya had made earlier, keeping the fire small, but reasonable. It was now - much to your ire, you noticed your hands shake since he threatened you. It had been a couple of years since you'd been threatened like that. You were hardly a pearl-clutching noble, but it brought back an unwelcome sensation of feeling unsafe and made you wonder if you shouldn't have just left the man to die in misery.  
  
  
There was an absolutely battered looking excuse for a small crockpot-type device you pulled out. It had dried oil stains and had clearly been through the wars, but it was clean, and that was enough.   
  
"Mysterious Ser, would you mind telling me what happened, or um, your name?" you asked, wringing the shake out of your hands.  
  
  
He gave you an inscrutable look, taking in your hair and your body, your battered clothes, considerable luggage and torn sleeves of a knee-dress which was the colour of a sack-cloth and baggy trousers of the same material. Hardly classy, faded in colour, and the only feminine article you had. The sleeves were torn, and he noticed the pile of dirty rags. Between your sleeves and the blanket, you had wrapped his neck wound with those as they were softer, and ruined a fur on his leg, and then cleaned him up.  
  
You'd also took the beard crumbs from that eviscerated bread loaf but thankfully you didn't mention that, because you weren't even sure he noticed in his extreme fatigue.  
  
  
"Fight," he grunted after a moment, not bothering to elaborate, watching you pull out four bird eggs that had been wrapped repeatedly in your clothes to stop them breaking in the top of your bag.  
  
  
"I hope you like bird eggs because I'm not used to hunting in Westerosi land and this is all there is, other than some veggies," you took stock of the size of the man - huge, even out of his armour. You doubted that bread had gone very far. You rationed meticulously only to shove it all at a stranger.  
  
  
Typical you. Stupid hippocratic maester oath.  
  
  
His stomach rumble answered for him, but he nodded slowly. He watched as you took what remained of what was once a large block of animal fat, and used the last sliver to sizzle it in the pan, throwing in the last of your food.   
  
"This would be better with onions," you said matter-of-factly, before telling him your name, trying to fill the silence.  
  
You weren't even sure why you saved this ungrateful asshole of a knight.  
  
He looked at you in slight surprise, but not much - you looked like some foreign type, some sort of mix, but the last name "Sand" confirmed it.  
  
"Essos bastard?" he said, his fatigue waning at the smell of the cracking bird eggs. The hard carrot you chopped and put in didn't look too nice, the mushrooms looked questionable too, but you knew your field well. There were two things you enjoyed, brewing medicine, and brewing food. Both were an art. If it was one thing about Essos culture that refused to die from you upon travelling to Westeros, it was your love of the romantic arts. Cooking, poetry, literature,  _love,_ passion, things that the Essos folk loved, particularly the Dornes, but it was a widespread part of culture. A love of freedom and piping hot passion - that was how you would sum up the culture you had grown with. Food was part of it, at least, to you.  
  
  
"That an issue, Ser? Or shall I go with Westerosi Bastard if you don't feel like deigning me with your name," there was humour tinged in your voice, but you were dying to make the man less....imposing seeming. So far you'd put yourself out to your own detriment out of some misplaced oath you swore as a maester and you weren't even a fucking maester anymore.  
  
  
"I ain't a Ser anymore, probably won't be ever again," he said with a half-shrug, slowly sitting up for the first time. He saw the awkward apology on your lips and cut you off roughly.  
  
"Thank fuck for that,"   
  
  
This confused you greatly, who wouldn't want to be a knight? Some little boys stayed awake at night just dreaming about it and pretending to be one on the playground.  
  
Then again, you supposed - Westeros has had some questionable rulers and maybe it shouldn't be such a big shock that he didn't want to knight for people of the former-king Joffrey's ilk. That would be enough to pop any boy's fairytale, but still, the man gave off such a gruff and cynical demeanour that you would easily believe he was disillusioned long before then.   
  
You wanted to ask if he was in some kind of trouble, he said he'd been in a 'fight' after all, and was no longer a Ser, but then again....  
  
 _Weren't you in some kind of trouble yourself?_  
  
Asking about that would probably just pry open a portal of questions you didn't want to answer yet, if it all, so you didn't press it, for which the man was thankful, stomach rumbling again as you took out the only plate you had. You had only packed for one supply-wise even if you had an excess of everything else from clearing out your operating station and being on the road a while, with a few stops here and there.  
  
  
All four bird eggs had been cracked, the mushrooms even smelled nice and the carrot pierces looked as though they'd been softened, and the tomato which may have been getting soft had toasted so nicely that he didn't think he'd care either way. Hells, he was even prepared to try the seemingly random plants you thrown in - you knowing full well that they were a fine flavouring, not the most refined palette but, just a little sweet.  
  
  
He blinked as you poured most of it into the plate and took mostly vegetables and half of one of the fried large bird eggs and left the rest to him, having to eat out of the pot itself. He was a big guy - you rationalized, a big, _injured_ and underfed man. You, were a small Essos woman with a fair appetite and a larger thirst more than anything else. He needed it more than you.  
  
  
"Sandor Clegane," he said, when he was given the plate.  So far you stopped, you nursed him, ruined your poor sleeves in the process and used what was probably a considerable amount of what was left of your supplies, destroyed your sleeping fur and all you'd gotten was a threat for your trouble.  
  
When you didn't recognise the man's last name, not immediately, but just had a vague recognition of hearing "Clegane" somewhere, he seemed a little relieved by it, and felt strange when it came to eating the makeshift egg fry up. He wasn't sure if it was what was left of his knightly honour (but really, did he have that at any point? He was starting to doubt) - or guilt, because he rarely ever felt guilty about anything, but the comfortable silence was broken again, this time, by him.  
  
"Thanks,"   
  
  
You weren't sure if that was for patching him up or the food, or both, but you didn't press, you just accepted it. You were tired, and glad for the rest, there was a third of alcohol left - you'd splashed a lot of it when trying to quickly clean Sandor's wound, so you took it for flavour, and tossed the beaten man the rest.   
  
  
"I was heading for King's Landing but I'm not getting this far with this little. Backtracking to the Vale is optional, because I don't know where I'd begin to hunt for game around here," you said after a moment.    
  
  
"Farmer's settlement not far I think, bit of a walk with no horse, could try that," he grunted "-just a leek farm, s'on my map, didn't think it was worth it, but if you're hurting for supplies you can - shit," he remembered - Arya took all his shit, and he didn't mind (assuming he was going to die) but now he was  _not dead_ he could  **really** use some of his shit right about now.  
  
"You got a map? I could mark it down, I remember where it is, roughly," you nodded and unrolled it. He didn't comment on the state of it but pointed a finger to the North-East of where you both were and you hurried to mark it with a finger print and some dirt, lacking a quill and ink to hand.  
  
  
"You don't want to go to King's Landing, it's a hot mess, the King is dead," said Sandor, dryly, from the lack of surprise, he figured you knew, but felt some obligation to tell you.  
  
  
"I don't have anywhere else to go," you gave a half-shrug.  "I can't go back to Winterfell and God, nobody would want to. The Boltons are there to stay, I were lucky enough to leave the first time. I can hardly take The Black and go to the Wall, and there's no one waiting for me there either. There's nothing in Westeros for me. I figured in King's Landing I could find some way of getting a ship and getting a ride back to Essos,"  
  
  
Sandor didn't really want to know what you were prepared to do to get home, just from your own tone- your voice was frustrated and exhausted even to your own ears so Gods only know how you must have sounded to him.  
  
  
"I have no favours to call on and I'm of little use, there's not many places for women that aren't part of the working peasantry but aren't nobles, not even if you're better than a man at some things," you added, bitterness wheedling into your tone.  
  
  
Sandor, smartly, kept his sarcastic remark to himself.  
  
  
"You shouldn't put any weight on that leg if you can help it and try to keep it straight for a while," in an effort to quickly change the subject "-and keep cleaning your neck, and cover it until it scars over fully and cant get dirt in it. It's already infected. I can't imagine where it would ooze from but if it does, clean it and dress it with something,"   
  
He wanted to know how you knew so much, but thought the better of it, seeing the exhaustion in your face.   
  
  
"Noted," he said, before a small pause.  
  
  
"No horse?" he had to ask.  
  
  
"I was kind of hoping you'd have one,"  
  
  
"Shit,"  
  
That about summed it up.  
  
  
  
\----  
  
  
When the food was eaten and the dusk was beginning to creep on you both, you took inventory of what was left. There was alchemy supplies, but not much in the way of food anymore. Just a single potato and two apples. You'd honestly just cleaned out as much of the stock cupboards as possible on your last pit stop and fled into the night, and thus, had a weird mishmash of things, one of which had gone rotten and you had to throw out.  
  
  
"Why'd you stop anyway?" said the man after a moment, watching you yawn despite your own will to stay awake. It had been exhausting trying to make medical solutions from very little in the way of supplies, and you'd walked for days and nights sometimes. "I'd have just killed me or kept walking,"   
  
  
You were apparently correct in your assessment of his cynicism - he wasn't a particularly optimistic guy.  
  
  
"I could have been a bandit trap, or a thief on my own, or a raper," he said idly, you grimaced - he could still be at least one of those things,and he caught the look, but didn't have the gall to be offended at all. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn't trust himself as far as he could throw himself.  
  
"I took an oath once," you said with a tired shrug, laying out what remained of your destroyed fur. Sandor would probably be colder, but you had enough of giving all your shit to him for one night.  
  
  
"-and I'd like to think that if I was in such a way, someone would help me,"  
  
  
What a stupid, naive way of thinking - he would have rebuked it on the spot, except this thought process saved his life, so in this moment, Sandor had humbled himself a little,  
  
  
"I know it hurts and it's cold but I don't have any more blankets, so, I don't know. Wake me if you start feeling sick, we'll....shit, I don't know. I'll figure it out if it happens," you sighed. Other than worrying if he was a raper, this might be the safest sleep you've had in a while. There was strength in numbers and, injured or not, Sandor Clegane was a big man, and anyone would think twice before messing with you.   
  
  
...You hoped.  
  
  
Sandor didn't reply, he just grunted, and you took that for a yes, and tried to sleep. About an hour or three of staring into the blackness of the stars, it was deduced fairly quickly - (unless the Gods were feeling particularly cruel) - that Sandor was not a raper, or thief, oh - and he snored like a dragon with a branch up its nose.  
  
 But that was neither here nor there.  
  
Your random act of kindness severely depleted your supplies and probably fucked you royally, but you couldn't help but think for the first time time weeks - which was filled with hiding, running, lying and stealing - you'd actually done a good thing.  
  
  
Saving Sandor Clegane had been a good thing.


	2. Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which you and the Hound have hit the road and make a stop to tool-up for supplies at a leek farm, and map out the future.

\---                                      
                                                                                                Chapter Two: Water

 

"Your route is ridiculous," was the first thing Sandor said, getting a good look at your map. You tossed an apple to him by way of breakfast and sighed, rolling your eyes.

"No shit, but if Castle Black had been a little more accommodating I'd have found a coastal port from Eastwatch except no sailor would sail anywhere near the Skagosi waters, there was enough fear on even mentioning the Bay of Seals, and I hardly the gold to pay anyone enough to take a large risk. I had enough favour and wile to charm myself onto a caravan and slept through their passage to Hornwood. Thank God, being in Bolton territory just gives me the shivers now," you admitted. You had even insisted on sleeping with the cargo, and they'd locked much of it, to make sure you didn't make off with it. They had been good people, which were few and far between. It was because their woman - Alynne, was pregnant, and worried for her baby, she was injured and - with a list of supplies to get from Hornwood, you fixed her up and they took you as far as The Neck region, which wasn't even their route - they had business elsewhere in the direction of Ramsgate, you didn't enquire. You didn't even give them your real name, they expected as much but - you'd never seen a woman look so thankful. 

"So you fled the wrong direction, you should have tried the south," you flashed him an irritated look.

"I heard Watchmen were brave, I didn't think them all ball-cut cowards too scared to brave just passing over Skagosi seas, I had supplies their own maester's could have used that I'd have traded, made myself useful somehow, but they're a mess. Their minds are only on the Freefolk,"

Sandor let out a dark chuckle, it was the first time you heard him laugh and if it wasn't for the subject matter, you might not have minded it so much.

"The Night's Watch is made of men who have pasts to run from, rapers, murderers, thieves and lowlives who think taking a vow and pissing off the edge of the Wall somehow rubs some of the blood out of their ledgers," said Sandor flatly.

"You're looking for brave in the wrong place," he added, and your expression drew into a full scowl.

"I got more bravery from a pregnant woman and a merchant," you mumbled, 

He said nothing at that, just inclining his head slightly in acknowledgement. Sandor looked and frowned a little as you packed his leg armour into your bag, which now had some space from how much food they'd consumed. His armour was heavy, he had his shoulder and chest plating back on but his leg wouldn't be going in it any time soon, he was half armoured, but it made your bag heavier. He offered to carry it, and didn't seem to want you carrying it all, seeing how much heavy those piles of steel made your backpack, you scowled regardless. You'd been carrying your own shit for ages now, and if he accidentally put weight on his leg, the bag added to it wouldn't be much help.

"Just concentrate on not walking on your fucked up leg," you were a little too small to lean on comfortably without feeling the weight of this incredibly large man on your shoulder. Maybe if you were taller and could support him easier, but he was just so fucking big. What the hells did his mama feed him?

"God, why are you so big?!" it couldn't be helped, the only thing you could do was give him the thick branch you'd used as a staff to support yourself on the walk through The Neck and then to the centre of the Vale. They were now in that awkward patch too far to be close to the Bloody Gate. The sudden statement made Sandor look at you oddly, not sure what to say. Sure he was big, but he was the shorter compared to the monstrosity known as The Mountain - his brother, it was strange to be looked at like he was some kind of giant when in truth he was the lesser one.

"Why are you so small?" he shot back, frowning down at you.

"It's just, I can't really support you when my head is the same level as your tits," you bit out.

"I don't need support." he barked out "-and I definitely don't have tits, I'm fairly certain you had the pleasure of checking while I was unconscious," he snarked back, without any real malice, but you felt your face heat up regardless. Yes, he was toying with you, but you didn't know him long enough to feel like you were just joking around so maybe a small part of you was legitimately offended.

"Y-you were injured! I had - you - !" the fact his smirk got bigger the more you protested only seemed to make it worse and God you wanted to smack it clean off his stupid smug face.

"Of all the knights, I get the arsey one," you grumbled, turning away from him and watching him gimp alongside you. At least you wee both decently slow, you with the bag and him with the injured leg. 

There was a long silence as you trekked vaguely in the direction of the leek farm, you wished you could move faster because Gods, you probably had some minor bounty on your head, if any, but certainly one if they knew you were the one who slipped the Bolton dogs a disorientating agent. Had been simple, some base hallucinogens, some milk of the poppy if you could get your hands on it. Those dogs would be doped for days before they'd get anyone's scent, and you hoped that it didn't just apply to you - but anyone trying to flee the Bolton takeover of Winterfell.

If the Northmen were smart, there should be a goddamn fucking mass exodus of them.

Sandor seemed to be fond of long silences, and that was fine, you spent most nights in your own head anyway that a silent knight was of no consequence.

"Know how to use that weapon?" he was staring at the short-sword on your hip, you gave him a brief look, before turning back to the vast plains.

"Let me guess, you're gonna tell me I could hardly stick an imp with it," - it you had a coin for every time you'd heard that, or a remark that you shouldn't even have, or need for a weapon, well, you'd probably already be on that ship to Essos.

"I've seen smaller," said the man after a long moment.

"I'm sure you have," you mumbled under your breath, before you felt a hard whack at the back of your head that sent you stumbling several steps forward with a yelp, but the weight of the back on your back made you fall like a tower with the foundations pulled out from under it, sprawling into the mud.

"Bite your cheek, I've got a broken leg and bitten ear but I ain't deaf or dumb," he warned you, and you weren't sure if he was being serious or not, but in that second, you didn't like him very much, but he at least dragged you up by the shoulder when you sat up enough, trying to push the mud off your outfit.

"And now I look like shit," you sighed, you just wanted to get him back for the comment about doing something so unsavoury to him when unconscious. He didn't understand the oath she took, and for a physician to take gross liberties for personal curiosity and pleasure was an insult, to those that conducted themselves to the highest standards of the sciences.

Who knew he'd react so badly to a dick joke at his expense? Or maybe he just didn't know his own strength.

"It suits you," replied Sandor, without missing a beat. Yes, he was aware he was an arsehole, but it was his default setting, he didn't know how to be much else.

You gave him a look, why couldn't he just be humble and gentlemanly like the knights in books? Westerosi poems were overly romanticised, Sandor Clegane was not like the knights in the poems.

'Men of steel, hearts of iron, hands of Gods, and lips for maidens, arms that could hold back kingdoms, who quail for no one, only their King.'

You looked at the former Ser, and doubt that he ever quailed to anyone, king or not.

"You've got - no - in the back - " he was big enough that he could see the dirt that had gotten in your hair from his height, while you were trying to pick it out of your hair, until he simply did it for you, not caring that he pulled some strands out too. To your credit, you didn't react, because maybe he didn't know how to be gentle. He didn't seem angry, maybe he just pushed too hard? 

He watched you stand there, looking miserable in your torn up faded outfit which was now stained to hell with dirt, looking almost as pathetic as he had the day prior. He almost apologised.

Almost.

 

"The leek farm isn't far," he offered by way of comfort, you just gave him a dark look, and kept the silence going. Laughing and joking didn't get you far with this guy.  

Why was he even still with you anyway? You could just leave him, you patched him up and told him what to do, it wouldn't be a pretty healing process but it would do. 

"Where to, if not King's Landing?" you said after a moment.  You had been studying your map on your breaks, brow furrowed, again in silence, knowing little of Westeros beyond the rumblings that reached the North and Essos, so it was hard. Really hard.

 

The man didn't answer for a while, and you closed your eyes - you didn't want to be in the Crownlands anymore, everything was a mess, the evil King was dead, the Bolton's were taking no prisoners, Stannis Baratheon was mobilizing, the Lannisters were gathering pow... 

 

God, you didn't care about who took the throne, you really didn't, it was so hard to keep up with the ever-changing political climate. You were not dumb, certainly not, but each leader to you just seemed like another talking head. One dictator for another, as expendable as soldiers. One falls, another takes it place. It wouldn't surprise you now if they made the babe-skinned boy the next King - what was his name, Thomas? Tommen?

 

"Perhaps a babyface King isn't so bad," you murmur, when he does not reply.

 

"No but the hand up his arse puppeting him would be, it's a place to steer clear of at least for now. That's my advice, take it or leave it," grunted the man.

 

"There's other ports, it's best that once we tool-up we don't stop moving until we're well into the Reach," 

What he said make you take pause.

 

"I'm sorry, 'we' ?" you couldn't help yourself, but you were fairly obviously in a fragile sort of way, and the man had drained your supplies, taken your aid and then pushed you in the dirt, and couldn't take a joke - suddenly it's 'we'.

 

"You're looking for passage to Essos, right? Well, I want to get to the Free Cities," 

 

"What's in the Free Cities?"

 

"Nothing, but there's less nothing there, then there is in Westeros. I can be a sellsword there, I'm good at that," said the former knight, usually he wouldn't be so forthcoming but maybe he felt slightly bad about pushing you so hard, and maybe he didn't think much of the short-sword and the fact you pointedly did not answer about how effectively you could use it, and maybe, just maybe, chivalry wasn't completely dead and fucked. Maybe the Hound didn't feel so great about leaving you after taking so much from you, albeit you gave it willingly.

 

You said nothing for a while, pausing only to fix the knots that kept the makeshift rods at his leg to aid it in keeping straight and a bathroom break in the wilds before ploughing on. Your feet ached, and you were down to exactly one potato, and were covered in dirt with torn sleeves and now you were hungry.

Hungry and stuck with a grumpy asshole.

 

A small shack came into view, with spikes of green budding up from the ground, with a fence so low it barely reached your knees, let alone the large man beside you. Surprisingly, he charged in first, banging his heavy hand against the small door. It shook under the force and you wondered, briefly, if Sandor was even capable of toning it down, even if he wanted to.

 

The door eventually opened, revealing a clean-shaven and surprisingly spry looking man, perhaps in his forties, the only difference being he had a clouded over right eye. His body was lean, from labouring, but nowhere near as built as most, the leek business wasn't as hard as working a mill, it seemed. He took in both of you with a critical look, the man's leg, the dirt on your dress, the burns on his face - and then your eyes. Gods, if he could only stop his gormless staring, it was the gruffness of Sandor Clegane that broke it, which was good because you weren't sure what to do other then start self-consciously searching your own face for whatever imperfection he looked like he was focused on.

 

"We need to rest somewhere, so we're coming in," Sandor didn't even ask, and you felt the need to open your mouth and-- well, say what?

 

Luckily for you, if Mother taught you anything, it was how to lie, and lie well.

 

"Leek farmer," you turned to him, holding a weak hand to Sandor to stop him barging in. "-I may not look it, in the state those raiders left us in, but I'm an envoy from Essos, I was to get to King's Landing but severely underestimated the dangers in Westerosi land. I am dirty. I am hungry. I am tired. My body aches like a corpse-cart horse, and I - and my guard, would appreciate it if you would let us rest,"  it came out like an elegantly spun web, what was obviously horseshit if Sandor ever heard it somehow sounded convincing out of your mouth, maybe it was the fact you looked different, or the curb of the Essos accent on your lips that lent credibility to your story.

An envoy, some guard sent, raiders picking them off one by one, a man who looked to be a knight, albeit a severely beaten one. He could believe it, even if it was a little fantastical, they were not so far from King's Landing that it actually managed to sound possible. The way your voice strengthened on the truths of your statement - raising and emphasizing the fact you were dirty, unrested, hungry and aching.

 

"Raiders? They're a problem in these parts, I used to own hogs too, took those back in the day too, the, rat bastards," the man stepped to one side and let them in, eyes refusing to leave you, perhaps wondering what was so important that they'd send an envoy from Essos and wouldn't trust it with a raven. The sight of the big burned man made him terribly nervous, but his station as a knight made the leek farmer a little easier with letting him in, even if his mere presence made his house feel three times smaller.

 

His name was apparently Morallus, and you simply kept to Sand, and Sandor noticed you didn't bother with your first name, and following suit, used his terrible ability to be imposing to insist that Morallus called him Ser, and only Ser, and if he so much as breathed in a way he didn't like, raiders were the least of his worries.

You felt the approach to be unnecessarily heavyhanded, in fact, Morallus was kind of cute, mainly in the fact he was just fascinated by you. The humble leek farmer hadn't even seen a person who wasn't from Westeros before, and all things considered, it was somewhat endearing, and he took you as a distraction from the big fellow, who was rather scary, and had yet to say a friendly word.

 

"Oh, my Lady, I'm sorry, all this talking, I haven't even offered you - or your companion, anything - I'm afraid I've not much," he said, wringing his well-laboured hands.

 

"Is it just you here?" was all the Hound asked.

 

"The ball and chain died years ago, so yes, just old Morallus," the man said with an oddly passive sort of shrug, but not all marriages were happy, still, the blasé manner in which he expressed his wife's passing rubbed you the wrong way a little. Still, no one was perfect. Morallus seemed okay otherwise.

 

Truth be told you were still a little irritated at Sandor, and the fact he didn't like Morallus much seemed to be an indicator to you, to at least give him a shot, especially as you were just imposing on the man.

 

"You're not that old, hush," you snorted, drawing a smile from the leek farmer, who walked to his modest kitchen, talking across the room as the Hound and you, sat awkwardly at what felt like a dining table entirely too small for all of them including a man as big as he. There was a pointed attempt at not looking at the Hound. You were still....gosh, was mad even the word? 'Put-Out' was probably more accurate, He was rude, he was vaguely smelly at this point, He was largely unreadable, cynical, brutish and unable to hold a casual conversation - at least, with you, and you saved his ungrateful hide. Then he'd pushed you and couldn't take a joke, and seemed nothing but entirely critical.

The leek farmer, who was impressed and wide-eyed just to hear High Valyrian out of your mouth was honestly a welcome change.

"Where's your outhouse?" was the only non-aggressive thing Sandor had said all day in regards to Morallus, you frowned a little as he left, and got the farmer to fill your waterskins up regardless, wondering why he'd just leave you alone with the guy. Maybe he figured Morallus wasn't so bad or at least, no real risk. It seemed a little impolite to just leave a lady with a man you didn't know, then again, manners didn't appear to rank particularly high on Sandor's list of priorities, so you just added that to his growing list of (many) flaws.

Perhaps he'd just gotten sick of hearing you talk about Essos to him.

"I was about to put dinner on, actually. Afraid I'm not much of a cook, I can do enough to get by, but not much else," Morallus admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"I don't have a whole lot of options, but I get fucking sick of leeks and there's only so many ways to cook them," 

You then meekly pulled out the single potato - the last foodstuff in your bag, and tossed it to Morallus, who deftly caught it with both hands.

"Well now you have a potato," you grinned stupidly. After everything that had happened since you fled Winterfell, it was nice to have the privilege to simply banter, and not worry about Boltons in bushes, or - for that matter - if it'd rain over your head come nightfall and make you sick again.

That had been the worst.

"So I do," said Morallus, amused "-Leek and potato soup?" it seemed to be the best way to stretch one potato to three people, for flavour's sake if nothing else.

"That sounds good to me, would you like some help? I actually enjoy cooking," 

The man practically lit up, though disappointed he didn't exactly have the stocks in his cupboard to taste a foreign Essos cuisine, it was just nice to have someone to cook with. An hour and half ago, you'd been strangers, but plenty of chatter later and it suddenly seemed so very natural to have you bent over the counter in his meagre kitchen, reaching for salts and any flavourings you could conjure up.

It was nice - having a woman in his kitchen again, who was actually happy to be there and had some natural touch for how ingredients were handled, caringly but with professional grace - the same way you handled herbs of medicinal nature. 

Morallus had to admit, in that moment, he rather missed having voices other than his own, filling his small home, even that scary man was a slightly-less-welcome break from the monotony of what ultimately, was a lonely sort of life, even if he was slightly better off than peasantry that had family to feed.

When Sandor didn't come back after a while, and considering how little you'd had to eat since yesterday's feast, you had to wonder what in God's name was running through his system.

"He's been in that outhouse a while, I hope he hasn't fallen in," you mused.

"My Lady!" said Morallus, in mock-aghast tones.

"Oh psh, I'm a bastard, not nobility, I can joke about bowel movements," you griped, making the farmer's face split into a wide grin before he started laughing despite the vulgarity.

"I'm going to get changed, hopefully His Grumpiness returns," you said in muted tones, in case he suddenly sprang up behind you both. Morallus was quiet a moment, before clearing his throat a little.

 

"My daughter's room is the small one - you can change in there, second to the right of mine up the stairs - mind the rickety step, meaning to fix that," at the mention of a daughter, you had to wonder where she was, you saw neither hide nor hair of her. Worst case, dead or missing, but she'd probably grown up and made for a city or something, because honestly, who would want to waste away on a leek farm, when King's Landing and so many other places wee reachable? Wisely, you chose not to press it, even if you were burningly curious.

"Thank you," turning from him, blissfully unaware of the burning stare that bored into your back as you headed up the poorly maintained stairs and headed to the room. 

 

\---

 

The room itself was nothing impressive, the walls suffered wood rot and there wasn't much in there to suggest it had been lived in, but with the knowledge of a seemingly absent daughter, it just made the room feel unsettling. Maybe it was rude but, you took the time to explore it, not that there was much, but that was the problem. 

There was nothing, just a battered piece of paper on the walls with a dirty charcoal drawing of a hog. It was a good drawing - you reached out to touch it, and frowned at the frayed edges - it had to have been old. Really old.

Sighing, you put down your backpack and got the other set of clothes packed,

But first - to get this ugly, mud stained, ripped up mess off.

So, you did.

The process was simple enough, throw the sleeves down both shoulders, shimmy for all of two seconds, then watch the material drop to the ankles. Looking down - there was something else now. It didn't seem like there was any point. There was heavy bindings around your body, boned - made by mother. There were says - she said, to make yourself appear the way men want you to appear to them - that they only saw what they wanted to see, and that there were ways to play on that. 

That was probably how mother never looked a day over thirty when she really should have.

But you were not good enough, good yes, but not good enough. You never visited Asshai, you never did half the things your mother did, saw what she say, learned what she learned. She tried to teach you, but there was only so much of R'hllor's way that you had managed to pick up but the way of the Red Priests just seemed so strange to you. Fantastic, mystical, terrifying and strange - but short of taking the same pilgrimage your mother had, you could not be half the woman she was - with her....strangeness, and her wonder. 

But you had picked up enough, a powerful solution to change the voice, and the hair kept tied up, and some firm leather pauldron-like fixtures for a broad shoulder. Your face was unmistakably feminine the older you got, but much of Winterfell hadn't questioned it, though there was some unfavourable jibes of Essos men looking like sissies, the open-secret was respected well enough, as though they respected your efforts enough to swallow the lie - it helped that you were always kind, and often extended your skills as a maester to the commonfolk and working men who otherwise wouldn't be able to get their injuries or sicknesses tended to.

 

Now there didn't seem any point, you just hadn't the time to properly shed the tightly kept bodybind while fleeing. It took about twenty minutes of struggling to get the binder - which looked like a malformed corset, designed with the opposite purpose of squeezing your chest down, to just release you. Your lungs took in all the free air they could the moment it was snapped off.

Oh, god. You forgot how good that felt. 

For at least five minutes, you stood in the room with the door mostly shut, back turned, savouring the sensation of your spine no longer being kept so rigidly and your breasts being able to breathe, with a sensation that could only be described as your lungs unclenching. 

A brassier might have been nice, but right now the lazy freedom of nakedness felt good, but it was a tad cold, and Morallus was waiting, so you slowly put on the tunic, which was cut for broader shoulders and flatter, male chests, but you didn't care. It was clean, even if it didn't look the way it was supposed to, on you. Finally, a small knife was strapped to your inner leg, mostly for cutting the more arduous of herbs on your foraging sprees, tough ingredients or bark harvesting if it was needed for a solution or potion, it wasn't made for much else.

It was strange seeing your breasts presence visible in something, when most things looked like a shapeless mess in an attempt to mimic the broad-shouldered, blustering Northmen. It was a beaten green tunic that had matching, slightly patchy but warm, designed for the winters in the North but the only clean trouser wear you wanted to put on at the moment. Essos weather was the only weather that really agreed with you. Westeros was cold, not all of it was as cold as the North, but still. It was chilly, and bitter.

The door creaked and the entire archway was taken up by the Hound, you weren't sure how long he'd been there, or if you wanted to know - since your back had been tuned anyway, and there was worse things than exposure, 

His voice was low when he came into the room and closed the door behind him.

"Dinner's ready," he said aloud, before he became very quiet, leaning down so that he could talk more intimately to you - who froze on the spot, not entirely sure what the man had been up to this whole time.

"The farmer has a horse," he murmured in a low tone. "-before dawn break, we will take it, and leave," he had apparently been investigating the old semi-dilapidated stable not too far from the property, that had a sleeping horse within for rides to the nearest town, and an raely used wagon for monthly shipments.

You looked a little affronted at the notion of taking the horse - because Morallus had been so nice, but then there was the Hound's leg to consider, and your own frequent tire from having walked so much, and then carrying supplies on top of that, but still, couldn't they even just try asking? The look on his face at the notion made you regret even broaching the topic, and you were sure he was about to say something cynical about expecting kindness from strangers or something, but Morallus's call broke it outside the door.

"Not to interrupt but the soup is going to get cold," - the man had some bread to spare too, but you jumped out of your skin, wondering how long he'd been outside, probably not very long, but still.

The Hound took a long stare at you for a moment as you left, mostly just surprised, because you weren't a shapeless mess anymore, and pointedly was trying to adjust to the sudden presence of your womanhood, because what was a shapeless mass in shabby dirty robes with rock solid shoulders was now soft curvature and femininity that he had to wonder how uncomfortable you had been with the force it must have taken to tame it all. He didn't even bother to hide the fact he was looking, and you didn't bother to wipe the unimpressed look off your face. 

"Thank you, Morallus," you said sweetly, almost taking the man's arm as you headed down to the tiny table.  Dinner was silent, at least for Sandor, he didn't speak. He listened.

So far he deduced that you were a blithering weirdo, who he still knew uncomfortably little about, and the things he did know didn't seem to add up properly - like you being a maester, but being a woman, and fleeing Boltons as a result - implying you somehow masqueraded as a man. Arya was little, it was easily accomplished for her to play as a boy whose balls hadn't dropped yet, but you were all woman, and he had to wonder how much trickery had to go into such an act.

All the more reason to believe in his life's motto - trust no one.

"Well, I'm sure you've had a trying few days, unfortunately my daughter's room is the only spare, and the bed is terribly small, you can take my bed Ser, and my Lady - you may Armena's room. I'm sure I can brave a night in the straw piles," - even at that point Sandor had to give way to feel a little guilty - just slightly, about his behaviour with the man.

"That's fine, you've been too kind and extremely hospitable, you might be the nicest Westerosi I've met since I started travelling," you mused, watching Morallus light up like a firefly lantern. Sandor took that moment to excuse himself and gimp his way to the farmer's bedroom, and you helped Morallus clean up. It was an oddly quiet affair, but peaceful. God, you could have stayed in that farmhouse forever. 

Away from the politics and the struggles of everything.

"So, I heard you need a horse," said Morallus after a moment, breaking the silence.

Then your stomach dropped.

Oh.

\----

You closed your eyes, quietly putting the cleaned, chipped bowl to one side, a face like a child who had been caught pilfering mead. The dirty rag was gripped tighter in your hand, until you felt Morallus come up behind you.

You really didn't want to see his dismayed face, his betrayed face, the look of scorned kindness. You tried your best to be kind when you could afford to, and you knew the sting of having it thrown back in your face.

"What would you do for a horse?" Morallus asked, his voice in a low tone, like he didn't want to carry out of the room.

"I'd have asked," you said swallowing thickly "-I-I wanted to!" in a pleading tone, you turned around, only to be a little surprised by just how close the farmer was, and the distinct lack of anger on his face.

"And so instead, I'm asking you," he said calmly "-what would you do for a horse?"

There was an awkward silence between you two as you stared at one another, before putting the dirty dishrag to one side, you gave the man a confused look. It's not like you had any skills to offer, or anything to barter, he'd seen most of your belongings already when you helped out in the kitchen and gave your last potato, and Sandor clearly had nothing but the clothes on his back.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't understand," genuine confusion in you voice was what prevented Morallus from getting legitimately angry, and so he reached for your wrist, and pulled your left hand to his body, before settling it on his crotch, and making you grab for a bulge. The confusion that was over you like a cloud was slowly being replaced with mute shock, and offence - but mostly shock.

"I don't.." your voice sounded quiet to your own ears, like somebody had somehow turned your voice down, and all you could hear was static.

I don't do that.

You were sure you managed to say that, but your hand was still there, and you could feel another - Morallus's free hand, snaking around the small of your waist, going down until it found the hem of you tunic and experimentally sliding up it, carrying the material with it, making it bunch and roll the further it went. It exposed smooth flesh.

It was like someone had dosed you, because it felt like everything was going slower now, trying to compute the sweet man wth what was happening right at the second.

Wait, you said you didn't do that, didn't you?

"I don't....do that," you said, clearer, louder now, feeling your jaw clench in discomfort.

"I was kind to you," he breathed out, you wondered, briefly, when he last had contact with people, because 'here's some soup, lets fuck' wasn't how you regarded wooing to work, and you'd already said no, but his hand was still there. 

It took all the force you had to move your left hand out of his grip and grip the back of the counter instead, feeling his hand getting up to your bare breasts, the tunic riding as high as it could without being thrown off.

Then....it was like someone had put a big, red curtain down over your thoughts, the sensation of your skin crawling overriding you, your knee shot up before you even registered telling your own body to do so. It delivered a cold blow to the hard bulge and it was like someone had pulled his power source out, he stumbled back a little so he could lurch forwards, hands over himself.

You could still feel the sensation on you and it was enough - enough that you threw yourself into him with everything you could muster. It was as though the act had snapped the frigid cord - the rope that was getting tighter and more stretched since you left Winterfell, and it was on its very last tendril.

And it had snapped.

 

Fleeing Volantis. The Bolton takeover. Escaping. Starving. Lying. Thieving. Pretending. The flayed men. The dead Starks. The dogs that ripped people in twain. The fires. The blood stained ice. Pink-red snow running through the icy palace. The men who screamed from dawn until dusk because of what Ramsay was subjecting them to. The servants with tears in their eyes. The women who came to you begging for Moon Tea because Bolton soldiers had taken them the way a dog takes a bitch. 

The people who whispered about you and Mother.

The people who laughed at you.

The men who died on wooden unlit pyres with tears in their eyes, looking down on the people of Winterfell, begging to be ended, and nobody being allowed to put them out of their misery. The way they screamed, the way they sometimes caught your eye.

That awful, cruel harridan that the Ramsay bastard had probably fucked, smirking at you, saying that sissy boys were interesting, asking where your cock was, and if she and Ramsay should look - because of the 'interesting rumours'.

How your life meant nothing to them, to anyone. You were expendable. People could do anything to you.

 

Not today.  
\---

 

The noises alerted Sandor first, then the sound of a loud bang, and a scream, he wasn't sure what he expected to find, but it certainly not what he saw. He was mesmerized briefly, though he had his sword raised, he could only stop to take in the fact of innocence being utterly warped with rage, rage and upset - and tears, but mostly unfettered anger, that rose like flames.

Your hands were wrapped firmly around the man, who was flailing on the floor, missing so much air in his lungs that when his arms hit you in an attempt to push you off, it felt like the bite of a flea.

"Men like you think they can do whatever the fuck they want!" 

Morallus was pale, and the paleness was even reaching his pink lips, his eyes were starting to get large - like they didn't want to fit in his head anymore, or maybe it was just from how wide-eyed he'd gone. Your lips were moving, but you had no real check on what was coming out of them, like the words were bypassing your brain and leaving unfiltered, and it could have drove a shiver down a lesser man's spine, to watch a woman turn from a smiling beauty to a creature entirely consumed by rage.

"-To whoever the fuck they want!"

Morallus was turning blue now, and he had stopped flailing, and you had shown no signs of stopping.

"What if I got my sword and fucked your daughter with it? Just because I wanted to. Just because I wanted to, just because I think Westerosi women are hot? Do I just get to take her, because it's okay to take what you want?"

Your nails were digging into his neck, and had even managed to draw blood - it was fascinating, and it was the emotion behind it that made it different from watching Gregor Clegane pop someone's head like a walnut.

Morallus was gargling desperately, but he gave up on words long ago, and now was just griping for any kind of breathe, he was certain, in that moment, that drowning had to be infinitely better than this.

"Or what if I turned you over, took my knife,, and fucked you bloody?"

He was going to rape you, for fuck's sake.

"How would you like it, you son of a fucking whore, how would you like it?!"

Snapping out of his daze, his mind clicked onto hat happened, just from the tunic that had only rolled half-way back down and still showed a little stomach and the kinds of things you were saying. He had cleared the length of the small room in a few strides and pulled you off by the scruff of your neck, only, your grip had gotten so strong in you blind rage, and nails dug deep, that it entrenched a long trail, like finelly tilled land, right across the man's throat - like a claw mark, building up pockets of flesh in your fingernails.

Sandor all but threw you off him, simply sticking the man with his sword, and ending the gratuitous cruelty, not that he deserved it, but you looked like you were losing it, and you weren't sure if you had killed him, or Sandor had, but maybe he wanted that ambiguity, because he wasn't so sure you were in control of yourself. 

And you weren't. 

But you'd do it again if you had to.

 

\----

 

He looked at you, breathing heavily like you'd run a marathon, all healthy colour gone from your skin, hands shaking as you picked the flesh from them with the dish rag. Then, the moment they were clean, it stopped. 

In truth, he was waiting for you to vomit or something, you weren't a fighter or, if you were, then he highly doubted you were generally the sort that easily stomached the cruelty you were exerting.  It was best left to experts, like himself, or his brother. 

"You should have called me," was all he said after a long moment, with an unreadable expression. 

You had yet to say anything, you couldn't really feel anything either - at least, not about Morallus, maybe it was shock, or maybe.....

Were you cruel?

"I took care of it Clegane," you said simply, surprised at the lack of feeling in your tone "-I think he was dead before you stuck him,"

Sandor, for your sake, neither confirmed nor denied it.

"Better safe than sorry,"

Yes, it was definitely shock, mixed with frustration, you'd had enough of it all, and snapped. It was only then that you realized your face was wet, and you had been in tears when you attacked Morallus.  You didn't say anything for a long time, and pointedly did not look at the leek farmer's body, but Sandor noticed - when he came back to the room, his face was covered down to the neck by the dish rag.  
You felt strangely drained, being that angry had exhausted you, and you were already mentally berating yourself for not 'seeing it' - you were certain Morallus had called you 'exotic' a fair few times, and he stared a lot, but you just thought he was curious - God...stupid!

 

"I was stupid. If we're continuing to travel together, accept my apology. You were right to be cynical, I suppose in fleeing the North my mind was on bigger evils, that I forgot the smaller ones," you crudely poked Morallus's arm with your boot a little to illustrate the point, but came off as entirely stiff, like you had read out the words you had just said. 

 

"That kind of mistake can be the difference in getting killed or not. It won't happen again. Please strap my things to the horse, I need to get my old dress from the other room," you said stoically, after Sandor raided the kitchen and the home in general as you pulled yourself together desperately.

 

Sandor didn't disagree with you, because it was a harsh truth.

"Trust no one," the man said to you, grabbing the bag and gimping to the horse outside. You stood for a moment, until he was a few paces away, and swung the door shut, turning to the closest thing you could find - the cupboard, opening it, and promptly throwing up the contents of dinner.

 

Sandor Clegane easily heard it, but figured this was an attempt at bravado, some pride to hold onto, and he could understand that, and so politely ignored it, silently strapping the supplies to the horse tied up outside in the stables and purposely made his march back slow, hoping you'd be cleaned up by then and not falling apart by the seams.

There was no way you were leaving unrested after all this, and how far they'd travelled just to get to the damn farm in the first place, but the air was tense, and uncomfortable. He saw you staring at the poorly covered body with a lack of expression, before trying to dismiss it all together and stepping over it with all the grace you could muster.

"We should rest, it's going to be a long ride, goodnight Clegane,"  trying to put yourself back together, you bid him goodnight and headed for the smaller room.

 

"Yeah.....night, Sand," was all he said, staring at Morallus's body on the floor.

Bugger.

\---

 

The room, if possible, now seemed even creepier than before, and yes, it was in your head, but it was like the slim, wood-rot walls had gotten even closer together. The lack of light didn't help, it just...every creak underfoot didn't feel homely, it just felt like a place you wanted to leave in the dust. The room was lonely, and sad, and you could only feel for the poor girl had been raised with it. In such a sad lonely place, in the middle of nowhere.

Your stomach dropped for the second time that night. 

If the daughter was alive, if the daughter came back - she was just going to find dad's body - with claw marks in his neck that was missing bits of flesh, face blue and on the floor. It was a sickening thought.

Looking at the threadbare bed that had bits of straw sticking out, you strode out of the room, and headed to Morallus's. It should have been difficult to stand in there, considering you just killed the man, but the thought of not being alone kept you rooted in place until Sandor came up. You weren't sure what he was doing, but he came up eventually, and looked at you oddly.

"I can't sleep in that room," was all you said, before swallowing thickly, "-can I just stay here a while?" he watched you stand awkwardly, arms folded under your chest, refusing to crane your head up to meet his stare.

"Knock yourself out, anyway, you need to help me get this shit off and on," gesturing to the would-be cast construction around his broken leg. The distraction was welcome, he could tell from the look on you face, and there was silence as he sat on the larger bed and watched you loosening and removing the fur straps and the rods and the many knots, the whole thing took thirty minutes, and he spent most of it just watching the top of your head as you moved, knelt on the bed.

"You should try to rest though," he said after a moment.

"It's fine, I don't sleep a lot these days," that was perhaps the first time you'd been barenaked honest without chewing anything back with the man, and it showed in your tone.

When you were done, he lay back on the bed, keeping his leg as straight as he could as he swung it on. He was such a big man that he took up most, if not all, of the bed, and it felt weird to him, seeing you sit on the floor with your knees drawn up to you chest, just sighing and watching over him with a troubled stare. 

"What if his daughter comes back and finds his body like that?" you confessed, seeing Sandor stare at you quizzically in silence from across the room, his back resting on the wall where a taller headboard would be.

"I moved it," he said simply - he moved it outside, but out of immediate sight. You couldn't keep the surprise off your face - that the daughter even entered his head and that he had the foresight.

"I supposed you wouldn't want to see it first thing in the morning when we walk though the kitchen," he elaborated, seeing the surprise on your face, which only intensified.

He did it for you.

It was perhaps the first non entirely selfish thing he'd done since the short time you knew him. 

"Thank you Sandor," 

He noticed you used his first name, but didn't comment, just shrugging and stretching tiredly, his bones clicking a little as he did so. He was nothing if not blunt though - choosing this moment, figuring you wee a bit more put together - to ask you something.

"Was that your first kill?"

 

Silence.

 

Be honest? Or.....

 

God, you were too tired to lie, because keeping lies straight was exhausting, 

 

"No, no he wasn't," You recalled times of killing people in their sleep - who had incurable illness that pained them with every breathe, people who died when trying to remove an unsavable limb, or soldiers with an axe half in their bodies, simply expiring on the maester's table, and the ons who just begged for it, after being subjected to Ramsay's ilk, if not Ramsay himself.

 

"I've killed out of mercy, necessity and kindness, but never anger," you murmured.

 

Sandor contemplated telling you that it was justified all things considered, but your statement made him think - he was the opposite. He killed in anger often, not like Gregor, not as someone dictated to by anger, but someone who operated it, with it bubbling inside them as energy, like a battery. Men, he thought, were built to kill, and he made no show of hiding that or relishing in it, but were women?

He took one look at you and wasn't sure.

"There's a first for everything," he moved a little, after some thought on his part.  "You can sleep on the floor, in the hall, in that room or on this bed, but if you sleep here you better not kick and Gods help you if you wake me before dawn," even the invite was vaguely threatening, and you didn't know the Hound extremely well at all, and in light of morallus, your eyes were filled with mistrust. 

 

"Trust no one," you shot his words back at him, but he just shrugged.

"If I wanted to, fucked up or not I had the chance to ruin you bloody the first night in the wilds, frankly, I don't give much of a fuck where you sleep, offers there, take it or leave it."

On principle, you didn't take it after that, until the sound of ungainly snores filled the room.

Stupid Clegane, even when he was being nice, he was a dick.

Maybe, you rationalized, it'd be less dangerous feeling if he didn't know I was there, because they'd be no temptations and you could wake up quickly well before he did and crawl out, -and- he gave you permission, he didn't say there was a time limit on the offer. Creeping over quietly, cringing when the floor creaked, you slid out of your boots and edged onto the space on the bed. It was meagre, but you were small, and kept you back turned to him. 

You couldn't have slept alone in that room, your head was spinning but your body was exhausted with all that you'd done, and both you and Sandor recognised it as some sort of breakdown, and you were just trying to handle it with some measure of dignity.  

\---

 

Sandor cracked open an eye, feeling the bed dip a little, but didn't comment, though it was the first time in a long time he'd slept next to a woman who was fully clothed, even moreso it was  not a paid whore, and definitely not one who'd crawled in of their own volition. It didn't feel sexual even though he thought maybe it should, because it felt nice and he wasn't sure why. He only had the clothes on his back and probably smelled terrible and Gods help you if rolled over in your sleep and saw his face first thing - he was certain you'd scream. A whore fell off the bed once in shock, it had been a pretty shitty feeling.

You'd come to him for security, and hadn't known him from the Seven, and yet you were there anyway.  You adapted to his disfigurement in a speed he wasn't used to seeing in strangers, he was fairly certain that this long in the same clothes, unwashed and overall dirty from his cliff fall, that he must smell like a stable, but you went to him anyway.

Then he remembered, the only thing you'd done was flinch - when he was dying, he couldn't register much, but he remembered having the dirt cleaned off his face. Did you have any idea how hard it was to get anyone to look at that side of his face for long, let alone touch it and clean it?

He made a little vow that night (and Sandor never made vows, he didn't even take a knight's vow and most assumed he was one, even with his patent hatred for it being made obvious) - but regardless, he made a vow. 

Since it made sense to travel as a group, with him healing and you with medical knowledge but as a lone woman - not as skilled a warrior as he, but both in the direction of Essos -  he vowed, he would try to hate it all a little less.

He would hate it all a little less and he'd get the small foreigner to Essos even if it killed him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pit-stop to the Grassy Vale is made. (Review?)

\---                                                                                           Chapter Three: Touch

 

The plan was to wake up before Clegane before he noticed you were there, but what actually unfolded was different. Apparently, you hadn't taken into account just how much your body had checked out so to speak. The past day or two which was heavy on physical activity, you'd been giving most of your food to the underfed warrior, then your one full meal you'd physically thrown up, and the frustrations and pressures culminating in a violent attack against Morallus - you were just overtaxed. Physically, and mentally, it was the first real (albeit, shitty) bed you'd slept in for what felt like ages. 

When the man woke up, he saw you dozing at his side, it was a sight he wasn't used to, but you were dangerously close to falling off of the bed because of how much space he took up. He was contemplating grabbing you and pulling you in so you didn't, but he really didn't want to wake you up. 

He remembered what you'd said yesterday, about not sleeping much these days, and thought that he could give you that.

He watched, with some small degree of fascination, for a moment, you seemed peaceful, and he couldn't help but think that it suited you more, and yet....

There had been something mesmerizing that had stopped him sticking Morallus yesterday, and the size of the man - he wasn't as big as some labourers but he was nothing to scoff at, especially in the relative comparison to you, a small woman from Essos. In your rage, there had been strength, and in that moment, you were perhaps the most similar to the Hound then ever, and didn't even know it.

Then, unlike him, you were immediately disgusted with yourself, so much so that you vomited, and he had to wonder - if you'd be disgusted at his behaviours and brutality. Usually, that thought wouldn't bother him, not even slightly, but being disgusted at sadism and excess brutality - that's how he looked at Joffrey, that's how he looked at his brother, Gregor - and the thought of being someone's - your -Gregor, someone looked at with contempt and disgust, like some sort of a monster - it was a thought....that made him want to grab the nearest, darkest bottle of wine.

But he was fascinated, there was nothing to Gregor but rage, and his own soul was not a gentle one - but yours? Gods, he thought he had you pegged the moment he asked if you could use your short-sword. Small Essos woman, can't fight, using a silver-tongue to get by. A talker, not a fighter, but then you'd surprised him - and become a creature of passionate rage. It was enthralling, seeing that you had that kind of capability, it was., well, would he be mad for thinking it was slightly attractive? Something about a deadly woman, not being totally inept, was appealing. Yes, he knew you needed protecting, you weren't built to fight in the way he was,, but seeing that you could handle yourself - it was different. Different to the nobility he had found himself enamoured with, you were no little bird. You were no Sansa Stark, you were a hard flavour of different - foreign, and, you were sarcastic, a little abrasive, but - unmistakably kind.

Different.

You were laid on your side now, your hand between both of your heads on the chicken-feather pillow, palm open, a little drool from your lip. It was too innocent for what he'd just seen you do the night prior. His eyes wandered over to your palm, which was marred with slits, curious ones. At first glance he just thought you had strange palm lines, but upon a proper look, there were too many.  They were perfect horizontal lines, ritualistic almost, He wondered if your other hand was like that - and it was, but it was baffling, did that happen at Winterfell?

He blinked as you opened your eyes and let out a deep yawn that came right from the bones. The bed was straw and it wasn't particularly soft, it was a peasant's bed for sure, but it was better than the wilds. You turned slowly, first there was the smell of sweat and earth. You slowly wrenched open your eyes - your head just felt really heavy, and for once your sleep wasn't plagued by the events of Winterfell. It was mindless and empty.

When you woke, all you saw was burns, he watched your eyes go wide, shock, confusion and then adjustment. There was no scream, or sharp gasp, just a deep breathe, and trying to compute the previous night. Yes, it was a little startling to be so close to a stranger, and even more so to be in direct line of sight with his egregious burns, but you didn't scream, or fall off the bed.

So that was good, though your face filled with colour.

It was now you could really see how bad they were, the dark scarring around his eye, the blackness, God, how it must have oozed when he first got it, the pain, though now it looked more a part of his skin, you could only imagine how much it hurt when he first got it.

Suddenly you felt terrible at the cauterizing him, but were glad that you had him passed out for most of it. He didn't look so bad though, he might have been handsome once.

Well, okay, he still was, he was built as strong as they come, and there was power in strength, and both of those were objectively attractive, and his eyes, they swam with experience, a hardened steely look, so thoroughly disillusioned. You lay on your side next to him, as he lay on his back, to keep his leg largely unmoved.

You weren't sure how much time passed with you staring across from each other in what was an ultimately too intimate to be comfortable setting,  

"I need to clean your neck," was all you said, by way of good morning, it was strange, being able to wake up as yourself. Your voice was soft, and not as critical as the statement was.

Sandor furrowed his brow, before you got up slowly and moved silently after that, with purpose, and professionalism. Neither of you said anything about the day previous. The air was stiff and silent, nothing was said about the bed share either, because there were no appropriate words. Sandor was rather a fan of long silences anyway, but he wasn't sure if it was healthy that you were just content to ignore what happened the day previous, or that you looked and felt considerably run down. 

But really, the only choice was to suck it up, he'd be the first to say it - but damn, he expected some whining, it'd be a sign of something....normal.

 

You seemed to just be focusing on Sandor though, using distraction as a fairly obvious and transparent coping technique, he wasn't about to call you out on it, because he rather did need the medical attention. He couldn't say that he ever felt the sensation of a woman's hands around his neck, and not in this way.

His eyes shut as you slowly undid the now dirtied linen wrap that were once parts to the sleeves of a dress, and grimaced. There was some sort of substance on there - and ooze you didn't want to think about, and could only imagine that kind of pain he must have suffered to have that on his face whenever it happened. 

This kind of thing was why you learned medicine.

It was the gross, demanding, complicated and fascinating field that required dedicated along with a well-honed mind, it was a profession that ran with blood and Gods - it wasn't hard to see why the world didn't feel it fit to extend the profession to women. The world seemed of the belief that they were too much delicate flowers to handle that sort of thing, but really, to you, wouldn't it go hand in hand? Generations of women made for fine carers, not all had the mothering nature but it was something that carried from human to human and animal to animal in a majority of cases, wouldn't so many of them do well in the world of medicine, if they wanted to channel their compassion and caring? How many potentially amazing minds just went to waste because they thought they couldn't do anything beyond "marrying up"? 

 

It was a sad sort of thought.

 

"How bad is it?" said Sandor, when you didn't show him the linen, you simply put it to one side - not willing him to see the mesh of infection that had oozed onto it. You looked at the wound - it was scarring over slowly, the cauterization had certainly helped, as had cleaning it, but keeping it covered ran the risk of it scarring over with the linen you had used to keep the thing covered. It was just that....Sandor was so dirty, it seemed so infectious to keep it uncovered with his hair so long and unwashed on top of everything else.

 

"I don't want to cover this up again until it scars over properly. It's a maester basic to leave them open, but the wound was too fresh for it to scar so soon and I didn't want to risk it by leaving it open. But now the scarring process has just started and - well, if we leave it covered, it might scar into the linen so - yeah could you imagine ripping it off and re-opening the cauterization? Yeah,"

 

Sandor, to his credit, didn't turn green at the thought, but he did pull a rather disgusted face. 

 

"So, um, if we can get you washed, at least your hair, you know, the part of you that gets most contact with your neck, we'll probably reduce the chance of infection. I don't care how rude that sounds, you reek like a stable anyway and if I had an infection of the neck, with my hair as long as it is now, I'd be doing the same. It's obvious but I'll say it anyway, resist touching it too," you said, matter-of-factly.

 

"There's a larger water pump around the back, right? It won't be glamorous but it's something. I'd wash out your clothes but,I doubt there's anything here that'll fit you and you'd be stuck being cold and wet and probably get sick.." rambling, you were rambling, and he was staring - you were correct but it was strange being motherhenned by someone so much younger.

 

"Bath and then I'll clean your neck and reorganise your leg guard, how is it, by the way?"

 

"It hurts like shit," said Sandor bluntly.

 

"Oh," 

 

And then he threw his dirty shirt at your head, and you gave him a dark look, struggling to catch it as it dropped off your face before it hit the floor, only to get a face full of - well, a face full of that.

There was rippling back muscle, and really strong arms, there were a fair amount of battle scars there but he was entirely a lethally in-shape specimen. You didn't bother hiding your gawking, but the Hound didn't seem to notice, or care. 

"I'll....just....wait, and.... start making more chamomile paste because um, you're going to need it," 

Thank God you couldn't see the look on his face when you said that.

 

\----

 

As soon as his neck wound scarred over fully, you vowed to him that he wouldn't need it cleaned with alcohol anymore, and he was a trooper for sure. He snarled and groaned but he didn't push it away or fight it, and took it like a man.  To be honest, with the face he pulled, you were glad to put the alcohol down, of which there was now precious little. Morallus didn't seem to have much, well, until the Hound came clambering in rather victoriously with moonshine kept in large, clay, corked jugs.

One whiff of the stuff was enough to make your toes curl, and he snorted at your reaction.

"Not the time," you said in a slightly clipped tone, not that you could order the Hound around, even if you wanted to. Instead you got onto your toes and pulled the Hound so that he was craning down to your face's level. You dipped your fingers into the chamomile paste as you'd done the day you first cauterized it, and began to smooth it over the soreness.

"That's just to reduce the urge to touch it, and cool it, it's really generic," and most of the healing factor may be in the mind, but you neglected to mention that part, as was standard maester practice, it was mostly for soreness, allergic reactions, itches and the like, but found diverse use as general relief. "You'll find, chamomile paste, depending on what you mix it with, is a very versatile cure. We have it shipped by the crate load back in Essos,"

Sandor said nothing, just closing in his eyes in muted relief, slowly raising back to full height.

"Horse, now." his tone was naturally commanding, and you had to wonder if he knew how that came off, or if he even cared at all. With a put-upon shrug and eyeroll to his turned back, the stable was the next stop.

 

\---

 

Tumbleton was passed through - it was absolute ruin, but you had this childish urge to explore it that he would absolutely not hear of, not in the least because legitimate bandit raiders easily found such places prime to hold up in, it had nothing and wasn't worth the trouble, at least, according to Sandor. 

You rode for three days and three nights, and didn't really stop except to tend to wounds, eat, and bathroom breaks, It made you tired and cranky but since Sandor declared your (admittedly) ridiculous flee-route so far, he was in charge of mapping, and direction, but was pleasantly surprised with the access to the bronze compass you had. 

"You're in charge of it, I know it's not worth much but it's mine, and Mother gave it to me," you said simply, and to his credit he didn't seem to be treating it any more roughly than you expected. 

"Where are we stopp'n? You never said," with a small yawn.

 You weren't sure how he was awake, you'd fallen asleep on the horse a few times, but only for the space of three heavily interrupted hours at night fall. 

Sandor had noticed, mostly because he rode behind you on the horse and you would slowly loose the reigns and slope on the horse and it'd be his arms keeping you up. Your eyes were heavy, it was twilight out, and the nights were getting bitter, and both of you were getting pretty fucking sick of leeks, in all honesty. You were starting to slope off the horse, feeling yourself getting pulled back up harshly.

"Grassy Vale, which, by the way, we're almost there," for the longest of time you'd assumed Tumbleton, until you went and passed it, and this was the first time you'd asked since, considering you had the feeling you were irritating him with questions the way a child might persist with their parents 'are we there yet?'. You spoke very little, mostly about how far your skills in medicine went, he seemed rather intent on finding useful trade skills out of you, which seemed just slightly rude - like he was trying to find excuses to keep you around. 

 

The horse stopped suddenly and you forced yourself fully awake.

 

"Oh my - Oh my God!" 

 

And then all you saw was beauty.

 

The grass seemed to get taller, and the houses were lit with candle light in their windows if it wasn't completely dark, revealing glistening vines and flower petals that had been watered before the working day came to an end. There were young children being called in by their parents and long fields of blue and purple. Bluebells, lavenders, and forget-me-nots - things you only recognised from your books on Westerosi plants and herbs, many of which didn't even grow in a place as cold as the North, where you spent all of your time upon leaving Essos.

 

The homes, even though they belonged to the working class, looked like small cottages of varying sizes, and a somewhat larger looking structure that stuck out with taller vines and high stone walls in the distance - a small castlelike structure. The horse slowly started ambling into the fields of colour and suddenly you had never felt so awake.

 

"Grassy Vale huh," rolling hills - small lakes, it wasn't as over the top meticulously done as King's Landing gardens but it was beautifully quaint. The structures were homely but the flowers, though in beds, seemed so much more naturally kept rather than kept meticulously by gardeners. There was intermingles of colours from the randomness that made the Grassy Vale a pocket of unique beauty, as the horse rode in, you saw rose bushes of colours you didn't even know roses could come in, and said as much. To say you were enamoured by it was an understatement, it was a herbalist's, alchemist's and maester's dream.

"How much gold do you have?" Sandor asked.

 

"Exactly five," and inn rooms usually went for silver, but you needed to save every coin, and you weren't looking forward to how much lighter your pockets were going to feel.

 

"Enough for the stop," said Sandor gruffly, you were going to ask where his gold was, and any of his stuff for that matter, but it stood to reason whoever fucked him up that badly when you initially found him must have took it.

 

"But not enough for a ship ride," you said pointedly, Sandor said nothing - he was honestly just going to wing it and see if he couldn't barter his way on somehow, now he had you, the plain was in the air really. 

 

"Worry about it later,"  

 

You just let out a discontent noise - that was literally antithetical to your mindset, that's how people got infections or bled out after all. It was forethought that had you dope the Bolton dogs and unwittingly assist not just your escape, but the fleeing of many Northerners, and finding the Grassy Vale - well, perhaps it was karma's way of repaying a good deed.

The Hound tied the horse to the stable and took the bags, gimping a little as he stalked behind you, and you entered the quaint little inn.

The Hound's very presence made it feel that much smaller, he had that effect on a lot of places, the person manning the bar seemed to be a rather aged woman. 

She had white, neat hair, tied back into a low bun, kindly blue eyes, and a neat, beige dress that had seen a lot of work over the years, but clean. She had a dish rag in her hand and was cleaning out a tankard. The tables were circular and had a few circular mug and tankard stains from a lack of coasters, and a tired looking man with a beard, who was quietly eating a slice of pie in a corner - which, meant they had a cook and decently stocked kitchens, so they had to make good trade.

Her face drained of colour at the sight of you - but you figured correctly that it was just the Hound's imposing presence, and you supposed his face startled people who weren't used to it. The woman averted her eyes to he cup, until you gave an indication to the large, hulking man behind you to hang back a little. Mostly because you didn't want Sandor to scare the shit out of a little old woman, and also because you could sense the agitation on her refusal to meet his eye - though, you rationalized, how could he not be used to that by now?

"Excuse me, ma'am?" your soft voice made her look up and meet your stare, which she then matched with a small nervous smile.

"Welcome to the Grassy Vale Inn, can I be of help to you folks?" her voice seemed strained, but you did your best to give her a reassurring smile.

 

"We aren't here looking for trouble ma'am," you gestured to the Hound behind you and spoke in a low, but friendly tone, more to the device keeping his leg straight then reached for the small purse of gold. "My....companion is injured and we're both in need of rest, do you have any rooms?"

"Singles are taken my dear, we only have three, let me just check the book," she tittered over to the books and thumbed through.   "-We have rooms for two available, just the one," thankfully, there was money for that - breakfast included, but you would be in dire need pretty soon.

On the tables were even small baskets of flowers - God, the Grassy Vale was really like being in another world. 

 

"I'd get drinks but we don't have much gold to spare, I don't know how long we're staying because - oh my God, have you seen this place? At the very least I can stock up on some herbs and ingredients, it's paradise!" motioning to sit down at a table, at least for a moment. It was a peaceful moment. The Hound watched as you gently picked at the flowers in the centre of the table, looking around and the long candles and floral scent that was almost overwhelming.

"It's beautiful here, but is it safe? I didn't see much law around," you said after a moment.

"They'd be around the castle we saw? But usually in settlements this big with a ruling house, they'd be some posted at the entry, like there was at the Bloody Gate," Sandor agreed, brow furrowed.

"Well....the whole place is ruled by that....scary woman, or was, I don't know - I just know that I heard some unsettling rumours which is why I didn't stop there long," you admitted "-what jurisdiction does this place fall under? Whose in that castle?"

"Either House Meadows or House Tyrell, either way, shouldn't be trouble for us, probably the best luck we could ask for in terms of not being bothered," said the Hound, especially at your slightly clueless look onto why that was good. At best, you only really knew which household name to worry about, because that was key to survival, beyond that, you kept out, but it seemed Sandor was more in the know than you on those things.

"Do you really not - Seven knows I don't give a shit about politics but the fact I'm more in the loop than you is a little strange,"

You just gave him a shrug.

"I figure the less I know, the easier it'll be to not get involved in someone else's mess. It's shitty but, if I publicly supported the rightful kings of the North being the Starks, it'd put me in Bolton firing lines, if I supported them beyond lip service, I'd lose friends and allies that I needed to get my hands on....hard to get supplies. I mean, it's mostly root vegetables and meat over there, filling a maester's supplies was considerable work," you said, giving him a tired stretch. "Small example, applies on a larger scale though. The less involved I'm in Westerosi politics, the better,"

"I'd agree with you, but ignorance can get you killed as much as it is bliss," for some reason, that came off like a warning, and was a little ominous to you, but you just gave him a dry smile.

"My dear, everything can get you killed,"

Well, you weren't wrong.

 

\----   
 

 The room itself was nothing grand but the bed was infinitely better quality than the one at the leek farm. It was definitely larger, and the window shutters were fairly beaten down and looked like they needed a carpenter's touch. There was very little in the way of furnishings but there was clay plates and fresh candles. In fact, you were extremely curious of what the Grassy Vale's main exports even were.

You were sure you saw a candleworks, and that made sense, it all had to come from somewhere, right? Someone had to make parchment, someone has to make candles and press soap - even the peasantry seemed to be better off, smelling nice and looking fairly clean. Even Winterfell's peasantry didn't look so well off.

"Is King's Landing this nice for smallfolk?" you asked innocently enough, and Sandor let out a rude sort of noise at the question, and the look he gave you suddenly made you feel quite stupid.

"No, it's fucking squalor,"

You gave him a confused look, because the poems and things you'd read had indicated a kind of beauty that had been taken from Gods themselves.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, if you're a frill wearing noble or rubbing elbows with nobles, it's a beautiful place. Full of lies, mind you, but nice on the eye - like what you've heard. But for the smallfolk? Hell. They eat slop and smell as bad as they look, they're a step away from extravagant wealth and it's all a bit ugly," 

That seemed like the most honest thing he'd ever said to you.

"That's....awful," you said, struggling for words.

"That's life," said the Hound bluntly.

You didn't know what to say to that, so you turned to the books which were the source of weight in your back beyond his leg armour, and silently cracked it open.

"What's the Grassy Vale's main export, do you know?" trying to change the subject.

 

"All the frills Lords and Ladies want, but mostly candles, soaps and perfumes, it's why they seem better off," he said shortly, before taking pause - he could leave you here. It'd probably be reasonably safe, and who would sack such a place, even if the ruling House got in hot water? The most that would feasibly happen is a peaceful takeover, as peaceful as they got, anyway. You were clearly enamoured with the place, and had skills that could be made use of, and if you couldn't since you couldn't take a formal Maester title anymore, then certainly you could press soaps and make candles, surely. It was the same reason that brat - what was his name? Hot Pie? Something ridiculous like that, it was the same reason he was left behind - to do what he could do, and do it well.

 

"You could stay here if you want, if there's nothing in Essos, there's worse places to set up," said the Hound after a moment, and you gave him a slightly annoyed look. It wasn't the first time he'd suggested something to try to split you up, and it was tempting, but you'd have to start from the ground up, and you had more than one reason to leave.

"Yes because years of medicinal study over prancing around for highborns should go to waste pressing soaps and making candles," you bit out.

"It's not like you can practice as a maester anyway, nobody in hundreds of years has ever taken a lady maester, and they probably won't start now," said the man, albeit rudely, and the blasé way in which he referred to your dreams and what you considered your profession just itched under your skin.

"I am not a fighter, not the conventional sort anyway, I am not considered to be noble breeding and I prefer to keep it that way, and I would like to do more than 'marry up' and there is absolutely nothing worse than the wasted mind Clegane. Absolutely nothing,"

It struck him as something the imp - the halfman, from his days as Kingsguard would say, and out of all of the Lannisters he was probably the most tolerable, and the thing was, the imp was usually right.

"Besides, who do you know in Essos?" you said bluntly, time to turn the tables a little, you were sick of being dependant on Sandor and his knowledge of Westeros, and you were sick of being taunted and jeered at, it was like being an arse of a man was just his default setting. The Hound said nothing, and you shot him a smug look.

"Well, I have a holding in Volantis, a homestead, and nobody would dare touch it," you paused "-they're even too scared to burn it down,"

He gave you a curious look and wasn't one for biting his tongue unless it was necessary, and so far when you answered questions, it just opened more.

"And I am not nearly drunk enough to tell you my life story," you said pointedly, turning a page which showed a sketch of what seemed to be the beating heart in rather gruesome detail.

"That can be fixed, little fox," you paused at the nickname.

Where did that come from?

"Dare I ask?" 

The Hound thought it fitted nicely, after all, he had a name - 'the Hound' - and he thought of calling you a snake, not to be confused with the Martell sandsnakes (though, for all he knew, you could be one somehow) - but he got to thinking of the Imp again, and half of the things you said, at least, not in direct relation to a hate for politics, he could easily picture coming out of Tyrion Lannister's mouth. Secondly, he remembered that artistic bullshittery weaved by you, on the spot, to Morallus, about being an envoy headed for King's Landing, and how seamlessly it had flown from your lips. 

 

You were cunning, and small, like a fox, and honestly cunning was probably the word he'd use to describe you the most, and the more he learned, the more he felt he was correct.

 

"You remind me of someone, and I think if in some hell, you two actually met, he would agree," he said frankly.

"I don't know if that's a compliment," you said after a moment.

 

"Neither do I," because again, he wasn't overly fond of Lannisters, and you just scowled, turning back to your book. You didn't speak to him for the rest of the night, but he burned with questions all the same.

You, meanwhile, had finally remembered where you'd heard the name Clegane before, after a sociable chat with the innkeeper when asking for an extra sheet, tales of The Mountain's brutality even reached Essos, but they reached to full hysteria when Oberyn Martell had been killed in single combat.

The Mountain was a monster, and you, somehow, had picked up his injured brother, and were hauling him to Essos.

 

You had to hope he wasn't nearly as cruel, once he no longer needed your medical aid.

\----

 

'Help me, I'm burned. Please,'

 

The words rang in your head, however quiet they were, probably from insisting on cleaning his neck in the morning, and before bed, it probably made him think about what you had to do to seal his wound.  His mouth hardly moved, but his chest steadily rose and fell, and you wondered if he dreamed about the night he was burned often. You still didn't know how that happened, and you didn't want to ask. It was probably common knowledge considering the relative infamy he had gained from his fighting reputation, but right now it was very hard to associate him as brother to the man who squashed Oberyn Martell's head like a luxury peanut.

Both of you were laying in the soft double, though he still took up a fair amount of space, you weren't close to falling off in this bed, but there was not a lot of roll-around room - and now you were sat upright, watching him, and feeling a little creepy.

The slurred whispered words were picked up on easily in the dead silence, and though he didn't look like he was having a nightmare, it certainly couldn't be pleasant. In fact, you felt your heart plummeting somewhere into your feet. Yes he was an arse, and insufferable, brutish, cruel and waspish at the best of times, but clearly his burns were a point of contention for him. You remembered how agitated he got at the innkeeper, and how aggressive he'd been to you - making you shake - after treating his wound.

You wiggled up the bed as much as you could until the top of your head met with the wall almost, and took your opportunity when you saw him begin to roll away in the opposite direction.

"You're gonna fall off the bed," you said in a heated murmur, not even a whisper, it was enough to wake him up, and he rolled the opposite way, only to find himself roughly head level with your neck and chest. You were in rather beaten looking sleepwear, you didn't own much, and it was much too thick to wear what you had for your time in Winterfell. So you had to bust out the old Essos nightgown, which was admittedly thin and transparent in places, you still didn't have a brassier, but it covered you down to the knees all the same. It was hardly a lady's nightgown, but back in Essos, Mother always had made sure you looked decent, being on the border of the Wall where the nobles stayed in Volantis.

"Come up next to me and you won't, it's fine. I don't mind. Nothing funny though," the implicit trust was a bit jarring and if he'd been more awake, he'd process it. He just grunted and then - and only then - when he felt you actually working up the gall to pull him did his eyes actually fully open, finding the burnt half of his face half into your bosom.

It was intimate, and you weren't sure sexual was the word. 

You didn't know if it was something inbuilt into women, or just you, but the need to pull those who wanted comfort straight into your arms, close to where your heart was, into the breasts - maybe it was something maternal? Something not linked to you drive to look after and care for everyone in a strictly medical sense.

The Hound didn't know what to say, or if he should say anything at all, and ruin what was happening.

But you were soft, really soft, and he couldn't - oh.

Oh.

'No brassiere, but no funny business. Right. By the Seven.'

He could only really curse inside, now he could take you, by force - but - he was his brother. He was not Gregor, and there were some lines - however few, that he would not cross. Then he went very still, feeling a hesitant hand going up his back, tracing his spine and back muscle very faintly until it found his hair, and the back of his head.

His hair was so much nicer when it wasn't filthy and matted, your fingers easily tangling in it as you rhythmically stroked the back of his head.

You remembered this was how mother comforted you, because you starved for it - she had been a cold woman, but those moments made up for so much, it was the only response you had had to go to after you heard those sleeping murmurs that made your heart plummet.

Ordinarily, you would not take such liberties, or take him into your chest, but there seemed to be an unspoken agreement to bed sharing.

That nobody spoke about the positions they woke up in, or otherwise even discussed it in the day time, it was treated as a purely economical thing, and a means to an end, and this, you rationalized, would be no different. 

You only hoped it offered some mute comfort.

The Hound murmured nothing for the rest of the night.

\----

 

"Oh, you're such a kind little thing," the innkeeper cooed, as you carried in several leafs of bread and a separate, heavier basket of inn supplies in the other, you weren't one for heavy labour, but you had insisted that the Hound rest his leg and relax. There was no mention of the night previous.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, I can be a wretched little bugger," you said with a half-smile, you did have to explain your knowledge of medicine though, after offering services to some wounded travellers coming though the Grassy Vale, but most seemed to accept 'my father was a maester' and a few even mourned the fact you couldn't take your father's place. 

You wanted to tell them your father had been a knight, and was a prick to boot, but honestly, this was far better than going through your true, much more intricate past - more believable too.

The innkeeper - Roya, just gave a disproving cluck from the back of her throat.

"Ever since you booked in here, all I've seen you do is go through town picking up oddjobs while that man of yours rests on his backside, pardon my dear but it's just so unseemly," she huffed.

You almost choked.

"I assure you ma'am that man belongs to no one," 

At the disbelieving look, because by now, single rooms had freed up, you were on your third day there, and had made more gold than you'd spent, granted that wasn't much either.

"It's complicated," you acquiesced - complicated to explain to an outsider.

"I said I'd see the candlemaker's daughter, she's taken ill so I'll be back rather late, keep a mug of ale for me won't you?" you said sweetly - the woman nodded and all but shooed you off.

Roya had never been more confused.

 

\---

The candlemaker's daughter was a charming little thing, the type to grow up breaking hearts you'd bet. Unfortunately she seemed to have contracted a muscle-locking disease that was usually tame but today was particularly bad. There were only treatments to ease the tension and gradually unlock them, it wasn't much, but they'd been so thankful - they even kept you for dinner.

"Madina, you're so lucky to have such a caring father," you cooed to the young girl, their mother had died and it was just them now, and Lorell, the father, was also struggling in dealing with how to cope with her approaching womanhood. His plan was to simply get a woman to help and talk to her - a friend of the family, if he could find one, but now there was you.

Madina knew what it was to become a woman, in the loosest sense, but the poor thing was horrified at the idea of it being a monthly occurrence, and the things she had to do to essentially "treat it."

"Yeah, he does my braids for me too, but he isn't good at picking out dresses or other girl stuff," Madina paused, she saw you as quite young, barely eighteen, but to her, just an eleven year old, you were old enough to be a cool older sister sort without crossing the realm into full adulthood, even though you most certainly were one.

"I bet you are though, I mean, if you aren't leaving soon..." she trailed off - you ended up spending most of the day with her, and it was nice not talking to someone whose setting was permanently set to "asshole".

"Actually, I am, I'm heading for Essos soon and this was just a stop but, I could write you, if you can read?"

"Oh yes, Daddy's teaching me so we can carve prayer into the tall candles, see?" she pointed to a case of inordinately wide candles, and smiled at you.

"I'll write you, I promise," you said, slowly packing up your things, only to find her shoving a little finger into your face.

"Swear it by the Old Gods and the New!"

You blinked. R'hllor was your God but....it couldn't hurt? You locked fingers with her and swore, only to be answered with a very too-serious tone to come from an eleven year old.

"So mote it be,"

You couldn't help it - neither of you could, you both laughed, and Lorell hadn't the heart to tell her off about swearing vows so loosely to the Gods - she was just a child after all, and you were young - going out of your way, you even turned down a considerable amount of silver after seeing they were in mourning over the girl's mother - but Lorell had actually shoved it back into your hand gracelessly.

It left you with a smile, but you couldn't help but feel bad about leaving Sandor cooped up all day, it wasn't like you were forcing him, but you were the one with the gold purse. You'd only given him money for clothes and prepaid the food, and even beaten the stink out of his old ones and washed his armour down to kill the time, he didn't seem to be hugely grateful at all though.

You brought a whole bottle of decent quality flower wine, nothing like the higher echelons of King's Landing enjoyed but a Grassy Vale middle classmen's wine certainly.

When Roya saw you walk in, confusion reflected on her face, and then mortification - in that order.

"Oh, dear - I think you'll want to stay here a while, maybe help me clean up,"

"I'll help in the morning I promise, I'm tired though and I feel bad about leaving Clegane up there," you said, halfway up the stairwell.  Roya opened her mouth to say something, and then cringed, thinking the better of it, and opted to brace herself instead.

If only you did.

 

\---

The door almost seem to quiver a little. You frowned and rummaged for the bronze key, and were halfway into sliding it in - you didn't know why the inn bothered, the locks were easy to pick and all took the same key, but it was for some rudimentary sense of comfort and privacy, you assumed, and turned it slowly until you leaned in and heard breathy gasps.

'Oh, oh Gods, Oh!

'Shut up,'

'Oh but - oh, soo good, you're so good ---'

'Shut. Up.'

Mumbles, then squeaks, before more pleasurable gasping.

A look of disgust washed over your face before you could stop it - really, he spent the left over money you gave him on a whore? Fucking really? In the bed you shared? That was just disgusting - for quite a few reasons. He was his own man, he could do what he wanted, but really? In your shared bed? With your money?

With a scowl, opposite side to the hinges so it wouldn't smash when the door opened, you set the bottle down, and quietly made your way downstairs. Roya didn't meet your eye, but you could see her cheeks were red. You couldn't even look at her, you just felt embarrassed for yourself, stomach twisting, and silently headed back out again.

Looks like you weren't sleeping in your own bed, and you weren't about to ask for a single in the same inn. 

So you walked, and walked - and walked.

The candles at Madina and Lorell's house had gone out, and you didn't want to wake them and then impose, even if Madina loved you after just one meeting, it was just impolite, and dangerous, but mostly impolite.

Sigh.

It was going to be a long, bad night.

 

\---

 

Release. He just needed release, pure, dirty and simple - but Gods, he couldn't stand the woman's shrieking, she kept moaning that she was ready, because she couldn't leave fast enough, he assumed, but she blatantly wasn't. What must have passed for lubricated and ready for most whoremongers did not pass for Sandor.

 

Gods, he felt like he could have split the thing in two.

 

Secondly, apart from the harridan's shrieking, was the fact she kept trying to turn over, he didn't want her to, or need her to. Nice as her tits were, he didn't need to see her wrong coloured eyes, or her crooked smile. The texture of her hair wasn't even right, it was only the right length, and colour - the same of yours, so he kept her on her hands and knees, head faced away from him.

Which was fine by her, because she couldn't even look at his disfigurement for longer than three seconds.

When he came, it was a sweet release, he couldn't have kicked her out fast enough. It was your fault, in his eyes, really. He'd gotten used to being pulled into your chest on most nights now, and it was comforting, he even felt a little looked after, which was damn near alien for him to feel. But then sometimes, all he had to do was breathe a hot breathe over your breasts and watch it tickle the loose material and make it so that suddenly the nubs of your breasts were poking through and that he caused that - dangerously close to his lips, and he could fantasize about taking them into his mouth and making you squeal in ways you didn't know you could, but instead leaving him with a growing erection through the long nights by hardly doing anything beyond simple comfort. 

And boy did he feel pathetic, because you would hardly react to your own body raising against his hot breathe, dozing peacefully, even worse when you got up and left, because all he could do was sit with his injured leg and rub himself under the covers to the thought of someone who could barely put up with his taciturn, callous and abrasive personality.

He still didn't know your story even - he only had it in bits, and he - he had revealed a little, mostly about Arya, and his continuing bad luck, like Lysa of the Vale dying when he got there to ransom the girl, but even then, he felt he knew unjustly little. Which, was ironic, considering he didn't impart anything about himself at all, beyond despising knighthood.

So he turned to a whore, at least, to shove off the sexual tension, but when you didn't come back that night, he rather regretted it - not that he'd admit it. But he did.

\----

It was funny how you both ended up doing the same thing, only you had nowhere to go, but money in hand. You had ended up in a seedy sot of place, but the inside was pristine, with low hanging curtains everywhere and women wearing slip-offs, nothing, or a brassier and panties walked through with the composure of queens.

It was a brothel.

"Awh, sweet pea, you just gonna lay there?" she was a beautiful, short-haired blond, wearing soft white that was utterly transparent. She was sitting on you, knees either side of your thighs. Female customers were an anomaly in Grassy Vale's brothel but not unheard of, and she was relieved that some male patrons had her practising how to pleasure other women so that they could watch, because otherwise, Katlana wasn't sure what she'd do with you at all. 

"People come here to feel good, yes?"

"Mhmmmmmm," she traced your lips with her finger, before trailing them down your chin, then neck.

You didn't have anyone to raven that was family, you had nobody in Essos, no friends to speak of that you could rely on. Nobody to talk to, and even if mother was still alive, considering the means she used to get your biological father to take her, you doubted you'd ever ask her about men. You weren't even sure why it upset you, it mostly felt like a betrayal of trust - he couldn't do that somewhere else? With his own money? You took him into your chest, you held him, you saved him, you starved so that he would not and he just takes a whore to a shared bed and doesn't even forewarn you so you could make preparations to rest elsewhere or come back later?

 

Yes, you decided. That's why you were mad. 

"I can't go back to my room, but I need to be around people, but I can't stand to look at him," you murmured, more to yourself than her, the realization that you, tiny woman from Essos, had nobody left, hit you like an avalanche.

 

"Make me feel good and pretend I matter for a while," the tears spiked, because your mind chose that moment to spell it out in your head for you.

'You're so alone, and pathetic, that you have to pay whores, just to feel like you aren't. You have no one, so you have to pay'

 

"Sweet pea, don't cry, Kat is here to make you happy, feel good," she whined, and God, you could lose yourself in how green her eyes were. She pressed her whole body down on you and you shuddered, you never felt a naked - well - anybody, on you, like this, and she was just so pretty...

"This is more than an hour, you dropped enough for a night, let me keep you for tonight, yes?" she was almost predatory now, but there was something playful in her voice as you laid on her linens on your back, the curtain clumsily drawn and pointedly ignoring the sounds of other patrons.

"I don't have anyone in the world,"  

Fuck. Why did you say that?

Your voice shattered as you did, and the realization that this big trip back to Essos was back to an empty homestead where you'd have to eek out a living or turn to the Red Priests and not be a maester just hit you with complete devastation. You whimpered involuntarily when she touched a breast, and she stopped, confused.

"Sweet pea I can't take your money and not do nothing, can I at least kiss those lips?" she leaned down, forehead to forehead almost "-I'll feel bad," and in truth, she did. You just seemed devastated, and lonely, and had nobody else.

"I don't know how, and I don't know if I want to," you croaked, but she put a finger to your lip. 

"I'll teach you, and you can lay here, Exotic Flower," 

You wondered if they were always this sweet with their patrons, in truth, you stuck out as a female - not necessarily there for sex, but in awe of their beauty, but radiating vulnerability, and the whore could see it, and was rather endeared by it all. It was a new experience, but decidedly a sad one.

"Exotic Flower?"

"Small Essosi woman, exotic flower - is what you are, and damn the source of your tears, you're too beautiful to cry," - and even though you'd paid her to say it, it broke you, and the tears fell anyway.

You had no one in the world except a whoremonger whose brother is easily the most hated man in Dorne, if not Essos as a whole.

No one.

Kat put her lips on yours, but it was surprisingly tender, and she invited you into her naked body, and invited you to touch her, but you didn't, nor did you make her touch you. You paid for a night, and she simply held you - and briefly, for a moment....

You mattered.

 

                                           


	4. Flower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexy content ahead, not much happens, or does it? Shorter chapter because the um....
> 
> sexy.
> 
>  
> 
> So yeah. Enjoy it maybe?

  
x--                                                                                                                    **Chapter Four: Flower**  
  
  
Katlana was enviously perfect, when you woke, she was smiling at you - and you weren't really surprised. You had basically brought time off for her, and some patrons were stumbling out slowly, the room filled with low murmurs and content sighs. The brothel wasn't so busy in the mornings, and it seemed that beyond the overnighters, this was their quiet time, when the workers got some much needed rest. For all intents and purposes, they were off the clock when it was this early, though there seemed to be some sort of rotating sleep pattern, because someone was always awake, to service the needs of the public at any time.  
  
Her fingers were brushing the tresses of your hair out of your face, marvelling at you complexion - she was so terribly pale in comparison, you were sure the sun of Essos would fry the lass if she ever so much as stepped in it. Katlana was practically porcelain, and if someone had told you she was a princess, if you hadn't met in a whorehouse, you'd have easily believed it.  
  
"Good morning Flower, did you sleep well?"   
  
Oh, again with that.  
  
"As well as I could," it was weird, not sleeping next to someone who took up most of the bed space and smelled like - well, a man, for lack of better word.  
  
"Mm, you were a little wiggler, I didn't mind so much, but it felt like a bad dream, did you have a bad dream, sweetness?" you blushed at her familiar tone, she was so different from the Hound that it was jarring. You were so terribly used to not speaking about anything that occurred in the bed as just a silent rule with the taciturn man, you didn't quite know how to respond.

  
  
"I...suppose, I mean, I don't sleep that well these days anyway, but mostly when I have dreams I don't remember them, so it doesn't matter," you admitted softly, unused to the attention you were receiving, you don't think you ever had this much attention in your life.

  
"Poor thing," she breathed against your neck, and you could feel her nose pressing lightly against your skin, smiling at her ability to make your skin raise in goosebumps, ghosting her lips over the flesh. "-Go back to sleep if you want, these are the small hours, I don't work these hours,"

 

At your surprised look, she smiled at you, reclining back out of your neck so you could see it.

  
"You're a harmless little creature, I don't mind," you then noticed your knife, which you kept strapped to your thigh, was on the nightstand, and blushed even more at the memory of her hands running up your legs to take it off. They had a no weapons rule, and it was obvious you'd forgot it was there,  You didn't know about harmless, considering what you did to Morallus with your bare hands and prior to that, you were a potioneer - an artisan, in true Essosi style you were an absolute fiend in regards to poison, a mistress of the alchemical. Harmless was probably not the word you'd use but you could not imagine ever raising a finger in anger to someone like Katlana.  
  
You were, however, a little perplexed by her kindness, and reflected such.  
  
"Oh, you know it's once in a blue moon that we ever have a lady patron," she murmured softly, stroking your hair "-and you just looked so sad, standing in the doorway like that. Shivering, lost little face of yours, like a child abandoned at a bazaar, I just wanted to keep you all to myself,"  
  
Katlana cooed a bit, and she was substantially taller than you too, which probably fed into her strange need to dote on you.  


 

"And, do you remember how upset you were when you breezed in last night? I'm not sure you know what you looked like," her finger brushing against your cheek as she gently took the left side of your face into her hand delicately, like you really were a flower.

 

  
"I couldn't understand some of what you were saying but I could guess some things, from what you said. Something about not wanting to go back to your room," her green eyes softened as she put her lips on your cheek in a tiny kiss.

 

  
"You said you didn't have anyone in the world, broke my heart in a sentence you did,"  she sighed, actually, she'd been thinking about it most of the night.  You cringed, and looked away, pulling your face from her grip when she said that. Great, a whore pitied you. "So I got why you were here, after a bit,"  


 

She paused, and took measure of you with a stare that surveyed you from top to bottom, before urging you onto your knees on the bed so she could coddle you from behind. You weren't really sure what she was doing, but the reason you were playing along was quite simple, comfort and attention. You'd never had attention like this in your whole life and considering you'd paid, you would relish in it, you betted Sandor probably never even thought about it last night, so why should you?   
  
"Mm, stay like this, in fact, take it off," she asked, chin resting on your shoulder as you sat upright, pressing her body into your back and smiling at the reactions she caused. You were in your dark practising tunic, one you wore when mixing medicines and solutions since you'd gone on a 'job' yesterday, and didn't know what she was planning to do, and the nervousness must have shown, because she chuckled.

  
"I have something I want to try, pretty please? I can stop if you want," you nodded slowly and blushed heavily, checking the curtains were drawn, much to Katlana's amusement, before slowly lifting it up your stomach and then over your head, quickly crossing your arms over your chest.

  
"You're really quite pretty, you know?" she gave you an appraising look "-I'm not just saying that,"

  
You didn't have anything to say to that, and just looked at the sheets a little sullenly.

  
"It's okay Flower, nothing I ain't seen before," she said, before dropping the near-transparent white wrap that was around her shoulders an tying off the slip-off around he smooth stomach, revealing her barenaked breasts, presumably to make you more comfortable, but her perfectness just made it worse on you.  
  
She appeared to be rummaging for something in the desk drawer and smiled upon finding what she was looking for, and then she crawled back onto the bed, her hands on the backs of your arm. You shivered as her bare breasts pressed against your back, you'd never been this kind of close with anyone before.

  
You were reluctant, you didn't mind being walked in on so much but it was just the intimacy of the setting, the idea of the nakedness being judged is what made you uncomfortable, and of course, how perfect she was.

  
"Come on, you're beautiful," the way she said it, right in your ear - utterly disarmed you, arms coming down and exposing your chest, face turning away from her lips shyly.

  
"What're you going to do?" swallowing nervously, she didn't answer, and draped something over your head briefly, you blinked and felt something being tied around your back. Your skin suddenly felt her hands move around your front and let out a noise that made her giggle behind you as she pulled up a material around your breasts, and was outright cupping them through the material with the palms of both her hands.  


"I stopped fitting into this a long time ago," she practically purred and you blushed hotly, unable to say anything. "Put your arms through the loops Flower," she let out a thoughtful noise "Exotic Flower.....mmm....Spiceflower?" ah, a native plant of Essos - you were surprised she knew of it, and kept quiet on the further developed nickname that just got more and more familiar.

 

  
"Yes, that suits you better,"

  
You were confused, but found yourself putting your arms through golden loops which turned out to be straps that held a brassiere up. It was so soft it felt like you were not wearing much at all, but the lift, however small, was there. With embarrassment, you realized Katlana's hands were still - there - and turned your head, finding your face brush hers.

 

  
"What're you doing?" you asked in a tiny voice, biting down on your lower lip nervously. She chuckled and reluctantly lowered her hands from your breasts, but gently tucked them under, and motioned to push them up a little to admire how they looked. It was a fine, dark red brassiere which had cups made of a deep, red sort of opaque silk that you could swear you could almost see through, but the gold straps were firm, but so terribly exotic.  


 

"I was going to give this to one of the girls but it looks better on you," she said, rising up from behind you so that she was in front, and was on all fours, with her breasts exposed and hanging in front of you made you blush because it was hard to look at her face with those just  _there,_ She resembled a predatory lioness like this, and you leaned back as she crawled over your legs and squeaked, falling back onto the bed.

  
"Do you know who I am?" Katlana said coolly, picking at your trousers, you let out a noise and held your trousers in place with your hands, skin a-flush.  


"I d-don't, I don't want that!" you said in slight alarm, but she just gave you a lopsided smile, gently prising your fingers away.  


 

"I just want to make you match, I won't do anything," you let up at that statement, in some confusion, but gasped when she took your trousers down along with your underwear in on fell swoop down your legs, You wanted to cover yourself with your hands, and you did, not that it did much good, nor did she seem really bothered, letting you keep your hands between your thighs in embarrassment.   
  
She had a matching, red material in her hands and put your feet through it with a strange level of delicacy, and began to slide it up your legs as though dressing a doll, forcing you to move your hands away as it came up to the thighs, you had to lift your rear from the bed a bit and didn't look at Katlana as she had a brief, but front view of your womanhood, cheeks and ears positively burning.  
  
She got up off the bed, still half-naked herself, and took you by the hand off the bed, pulling down a stained ratty brown sheet from what was revealed to be a large mirror - some patrons liked seeing themselves in the middle of 'the act' - or the woman's face, if they were in a different position.   


 

  
You looked at yourself and saw the tall woman behind you, who was taking your hair and pushing it forward over your shoulders, brushing away the bed-head the best she could with her hand, before grabbing a wooden brush and gently brushing your hair - something nobody had ever done this to you. Your mother hadn't even done that - the first time you picked up a comb, she was intent on teaching you to use it yourself.

  
This was the first real feminine thing you'd worn since you were twelve, and definitely the first sexy thing, and your hair was finally growing out - though you had discreetly kept up the effort in Winterfell. For someone pretending (albeit weakly) to be a man for a number of years, you had a long time before you felt confident. The deep gasp from your bones had made the green-eyed vixen laugh, and her arms wrapped in a too-familiar way, and repeated her question.

  
"Do you know who I am, Spiceflower?" she asked in a low purr, you said her name dumbly, and she chuckled.  


"Well yes," she paused for dramatic effect, and grinned "-I am also the Madame of this brothel," you blinked, clearly not knowing what that meant, just that it sounded important. 

  
  
"There is only one other person above me in this brothel, this house - and that is the Lord of the lodging, you may have heard of him as Littlefinger, but to us, he is Lord Baelish, and he owns many businesses, too many to stop everywhere, so every brothel will have a Madame, if it is run properly, and has standards," Katlana spoke with some measure of pride that you didn't expect from a sex worker.  "-And he would be furious if I let a beauty slip by, you know, you don't have to, but yesterday - what you said to me. If you were here, you would have a bed, and food, and nice clothes - you would never go hungry, and you would have so many sisters. In fact, I would make sure you want for nothing," and in truth, your complexion - your foreignness -  you could fetch a good, exotic price. "-You would never feel anything less than beautiful, and certainly not like yesterday,"  
  
You were in disbelief, _she was trying to recruit you._

  
Was she preying on your perceived vulnerability, or was she genuinely trying to be nice? You practically fluttered under the praise - this was a truly alien feeling.  


You'd heard the name 'Littlefinger' before in Winterfell but couldn't place it, but she made Baelish sound very important, so you just nodded along, pretending to know who she was referring to.  


"Turn around, see how you look," you let her twirl you by the hand. The panties were made of the same, red, near-transparent that the cups of the brassier were. It was a very small set but fit you nicely, from behind it didn't feel like it covered much, but it had a golden somewhat opaque wrap that draped around from behind, covering more of your rear than you expected, the gold matching the straps and lining of the red brassier.  


"Wow," you breathed, this was as nice as some of the materials your mother had given to her as good faith gifts from the nobles that sought her knowledge and skills. You never had anything quite to this quality, even if she dressed you well enough. Katlana smirked and lifted up the wrap to reveal how much the actual red material of the panties covered - the answer was not much, with a slim red strip of material embarrassed you with how much of your backside was just plainly on show, until she put the wrap down.   
  
"Looking good," she teased, but she wasn't lying, if you weren't so shy she'd have cupped a globe or given a teasing smack, but she'd already pushed her luck prior, and didn't want to make you feel like you wanted to crawl out of your skin. She wanted you to feel sexy - like you could work there.  
  
"Whatever your answer Spiceflower, do not decide straight away, just, tell me how you feel,"   


You wanted to say  _like a whore,_ but the answer was wrong, you wanted to say  _pretty,_ and that was almost as scary.

 

  
_"Scared,"_ you whispered, voice warbling, and she couldn't understand it at first, until she looked at your expression in the mirror - unsure, nervous, awkward, graceless. Even though you had nobody to go home with, you couldn't see yourself laying on your back for strangers, not after Morallus, you were filled with too much mistrust.  


"I killed the last man who tried to touch me," you said quietly, expecting her to flinch away, instead, you saw understanding in her eyes, and she kissed your shoulder, the closest part to her.   
  
"Was this part of why you washed up here?"  
  
"Yes," suddenly the lump in your throat formed, you didn't understand this silent, cosmic empathy the sex worker possessed, but there was understanding in her eyes, and she said nothing for a while, stroking your hair, watching you study your reflection in silence.  
  
"Would you like to tell me why you were so upset?" she asked softly. You didn't know how much to tell her, but the Madame was oddly cathartic, and you knew it was an attempt to pull you into her web, but you needed someone who could deal with your emotions, even if she was paid.  
  
  
"I'm travelling with a man," you said, in a low murmur, your hands slowly tracing over the red material at your hips. "I have done nothing but save his life, and sacrifice for him, because it's just..." you couldn't be bothered to explain your past, and maesterdom as a woman, so you simply didn't.  
  
"It is what I do,"  
  
Katlana nodded patiently, playing with your hair idly, simply trying to imagine you killing someone was hard, and personally, she was still trying to picture that to be honest, but didn't press on it.  
  
  
"We share a bed - it's cheaper, but, we share a bed. Just share. In the inn, and a bed before that. I came back from visiting the candlemaker's daughter - helping out, and he took a whore," you said quietly "-I came to the room and before I opened the door, I could hear him taking a whore," a little bitterness in your tone.  
  
"When you say 'just share' - if you are just sharing, than why would this bother you so? Did it break you heart, darling?"  
  
You recoiled at the frankness, and scowled.  
  
"He used my money, not his, and he didn't tell me. It was disrespectful,"   
  
"You cried," said Katlana softly "-I felt you against my breast in the night, you cried. Did it make you feel unwanted?"  


Unwanted. What a perfect word.  


"Unwanted, disrespected, take your pick," you said darkly, the woman pressed herself up against you from behind, this time you were used to the sensation of her naked chest on your back, but it was still odd.  
  
_"Do you want him to want you?"_ Katlana whispered, and you shivered at her tone, and the audacity of the question, even when she didn't mean to be sexy, she was, and when you didn't answer, the lump in your throat too large to say the outraged "No!" that was on your mouth.  


"She was one of mine, scouting for work in the inn, hair about the same shade as yours, maybe length now I think about it, not nearly as nice I must say, too pale too. An alright enough girl, been here a month, Doesn't have regulars yet, so she scouts," she murmured.  
  
  
"You're prettier, if you're wondering," she said bluntly.  
  
  
"It doesn't matter," you said through your teeth, Katlana let out a hum - like she didn't believe you, but repeated her earlier question.  
  
"I think I just want to be looked at like a woman, I've gone for years trying to do the opposite, because men rule this world," you said forlornly, and some things started to make sense to the woman "-but not like the man who - the one I - you know,"   
  
You wanted to be a woman, not a slab of meat.  
  
"I don't think I can do this, I'm sorry," you reached around to unclip the brassier and Katlana stopped you, hushing your movements.  
  
  
"Keep it. Feel like a woman," she said insistently "-I'm not fitting in it again any time soon," even though she was trying to recruit you, you turned around, nakedness or not, and wrapped your arms around her tightly, because you had nobody else. She seemed startled, but broke into a small smile, it was perhaps the most innocent thing a client had ever done.  
  
"If you feel you have no where to go, there'll always be a space for you here, so long as I am here, I will make it so," said Katlana, leaning down into your ear.  
  
"If you ever want to feel wanted, all you need to do is present as you are now, it is far much easier to wrap a man - Lord or not, around your fingers. More easy than they want to admit, and it's more power than they wish whores had, but it is true," she put her hands on your hips, and the ghost of a kiss on your mouth as you quickly got dressed, keeping the lingerie on and stuffing your old underwear into your purse pouch with a flush. The action alone made you feel like some dirty loser, doing something risqué, but you couldn't deny the thrill of the silk under your male-cut tunic and trousers, and lifted breasts unbound from the binder that kept them tame all those years.  
  
_"Present and walk away and make him cry the way you did over everything he's missing," s_ he whispered hotly in you ear, grip momentarily tightening before she let go, smiling as your face burned a fiery colour. You didn't think you'd be doing that any time soon, but you appreciated the sentiment.  
  
The walk back to the inn was almost a sad one,  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
You didn't get so far as the inn room, because Sandor was downstairs, eating the prepaid lunch, and your stomach rumbled, realizing you'd gone through all night and breakfast with Katlana. You had been making yourself busy in the Grassy Vale, but you always came back.  
  
"You didn't come back last night," said Sandor lazily, between pieces of mutton.  
  
You, with an oddly confident stride (maybe it was the clothes underneath?) - turned your nose up to the tone, and called for Roya to put another plate over for yourself.  
  
"Next time you feel like taking a whore," you said in a too-sweet sugary tone "-warn me, oh, and spend your own money. I don't care about food and clothes, they're necessities, but buy whores with your own money. I'm sure you wouldn't like it if I pawned your armour and brought myself a few sets of make-up, would you? Or your sword?"  
  
Sandor glared at the very suggestion, and simply said he'd pay you back, and you nodded - appearing mollified, but inside, it didn't really feel like you were, and it was hard to figure out why. Were you jealous? Or did you just want to be looked at like a woman? Even when you were changing in the leek farm, it was mostly a stare of scientific wonder to you, because upon the removal of the binder it must have looked like you sprouted into womanhood overnight. It wasn't a  _you're a lady, wow,_ look.  
  
And deep down, you were a lady.  
  
A maester, but also, a lady - and you didn't give a shit if the two were in-congruent with each other.  
  
"You smell like a whorehouse," said Sandor after a moment, and your patience snapped, or maybe it was Katlana's confidence rubbing off on you.  
  
"Shut up," you said icily.  
  
Lunch was a silent, but tasty affair.

  
He noticed something about you had changed, and he struggled to point it out, but it was in how you carried yourself, and you had even less patience for him than usual.

  
You didn't embrace him that night either, and he couldn't say he was surprised. He could only rationalise that the rude behaviour regarding taking a whore bothered you more than you let on, and hoped things would feel a little normal once he paid you back.

  
His leg was getting better and he was able to get some coin by offering to do some heavy lifting, and the silver was on you desk not too long after what you mentally dubbed The Incident, and his complete nonchalance had you wondering if Sandor was bothered at all by the slight change, and distance in closeness.  


On the day before you were set to leave the Grassy Vale, you finally pulled his head into your chest again, there was an audible sigh of relief into you bosom, or maybe it was tiredness, you weren't sure. You kind of wished there was no Silent Rule about the bed-stuff, but you didn't know how you'd begin such an awkward conversation, so you simply did not.  


You looked at the gold you accumulated after your week and a half in the Grassy Vale, it might be enough passage to go on a boat, maybe, but for two? You really didn't know, certainly not enough to buy a boat, but to be let on someone else's? Maybe?  


"Where did you go?" he asked, as you packed up some supplies you'd bought from town, and a complimentary gift of some soaps and candles from Lorell and his darling daughter. "-that night,"   


You scowled, and tossed some hair behind your shoulder, a gesture you were still getting used to now.  
  
"A whorehouse," you said smartly - and you weren't sure about the look that flashed in Sandor's face, but he said nothing else.  
  
Just, "Oh," -  _oh_ indeed.  


He was jealous, jealous of who touched the little fox, and it was irrational, because he took a whore and it was fine, but all the whores in that brothel were women, and the thought of you being taken by a woman wasn't something needed or wanted to think about, because the jealousy was dangerously close to being clouded with a horny lust at the thought. You had the audacity to smirk at him, letting him stew on it, letting his imagination run wild, when in reality, all you'd done is cry, and be held.  
  
  
You certainly weren't about to admit **_that_** to him.  
  
  
"We've got to ride for a while, where too?" you said, hands to hips.  
  
  
"Blackhaven," said Sandor curtly, he had some of the moonshine in hand, and you were at a desk, calmly reading a book after having packed and fed the horse. He was progressively getting more drunk, because you didn't answer any question you didn't feel like answering and it was infuriatingly like his own behaviour and you frustrated him.  
  
  
So in a way, he frustrated himself, in the day, doing lifting errands took his mind off of it, but at night, the thought just bothered him, and pissed him off slightly.  
  
"Don't you like moonshine Little Fox?" he slurred slightly - he seemed to want a rise out of you more when he was drunk, so you ignored him, until the frustration built.  
  
"Did you really go to the whorehouse that night?" he asked bluntly.  
  
You blinked - and resisted the urge to smirk.  
  
"What, are you still hung up on that?"  
  
He tensed all over and gave you a look that could freeze over hell, but to your credit, you didn't flinch, and just attempted to match it, for some reason, his irritation pleased you. You could hold onto a grudge for days, and the whore incident was still not forgotten, but you had no intention of addressing it outloud because every time you pictured it in your mind, there was just no way where your anger made justified sense after he paid you back, but it didn't heal the twist in your stomach when you thought about it. It was illogical and irrational and it pissed you off, so you couldn't address it, but it seemed Sandor was going to.  
  
"I am not  _hung up_ \- just tell me," he snapped "-you didn't mention anything else and you've been acting strange - even _for you,_ " he sneered.  
  
You scowled, and put your hands on your hips, the demanding nature of his tone bothering you, personally, you were content to let it bother him and let it stew in his mind. His neck infection had cleared up, thanks to your doting care, and you tossed the rag used to wipe it down to one side, and gave him a cool look, eerily reminded of when he first grabbed you and spoke to you with aggression - for cauterizing him.  
  
"What do you want to know?" you said, sarcastically "-the name, height, weight and description of the girl so you can find her too?"  
  
"She touched you?" he  _latched_ onto that, and you realized your sarcasm had told him too much, and you weren't sure why you did what you did next, but if Katlana could have seen you, she'd have smiled. Your lying ability came forward again, living to the name of Little Fox, mostly because your pride wouldn't allow you to tell him the truth. That you were hurt, and alone, and had nobody you could vent feelings to and so you paid a whore to cuddle you, because even that sounded pathetic no matter how you diced it.  
  
You walked over, taking your book in hand, as though he were an afterthought because you were going to head downstairs and have a goodbye chat with Roya before leaving in the small hours.  
  
You didn't know why you were lying, but you were, feeling your face heat up as you did, over the small table he was sat at, drinking from the moonshine jug.  
  
**"** _ **No."**  
  
_ He looked up, but before his blank face could change expression.  
  
  
" _I touched myself for her,"_  you hissed through your teeth, almost like you were being vindictive, trying to erase the noises you head the whore in your shared room make that night, and began weaving an tale fit for a dirty play _"I touched myself for her, and she watched, and touched herself, rubbed against me, and she was fucking beautiful. I touched her and I couldn't stop. All night, and all morning, and it's why I came back late. I kept that whole damn brothel awake, and I fucked her the way only Essosi fuck best. Passionate, and mercilessly. Best gold I'd ever spent,"_  
  
His eyes had gone incredibly wide, which might have been cute if not for the situation, and jealousy was certainly boiling beneath his skin, not that you could tell, raging within his storming soul. He was not of the same cloth as Gregor, who would have lost control instantly and taken what he wanted in a moment.   
  
Then finally, you didn't lie, and said something with such conviction that you wondered if you'd made him shiver for a moment, or if it was the strength of the moonshine in his hands.  
  
_"And then they made me feel like a woman,"_ you smirked, and pulled back, the only reason your face burned at all was from the nature of what you were saying, the lying was relatively easy, and the smirk was practically saucy as you shut the book in hand and walked for the door out of the room.  
  
"Well, you asked," you said tartly, before leaving.  
  
When he heard the door shut and then the sound of your footsteps slowly becoming more and more distant, and slid back in the chair, letting out a low, stream of curses.  Jealousy ran rampant all over his features, he didn't know if he wanted to go to the brothel and find out who it was just for his peace of mind or if he was shrouded in lust. No noble lady would have easily said something so crass. He was angry someone else touched the Little Fox when he was begrudgingly rather enamoured with you, even if he was frustrated by everything else about you. You were just such a pain in the ass, full of questions and sarcasm and just - ugh. You were good at shutting up, but boy did you love pushing his buttons.  
  
All of his buttons, often unknowingly, but many times on purpose.  
  
When it was apparent you were chatting to Roya before bed, he realized it was going to be incredibly hard to sleep next to you, especially after you painted such a vivid image in his mind.  
  
Extremely, _incredibly_ hard.  
  
Sandor looked down at himself, at his lap, wiping moonshine from his lip off the back of his hand, scowling up a storm. Even hazed in jealousy, he could feel the warmth coursing through him. With a measure of disgust at himself, glancing at the door, he sighed, and shoved a hand down the front of his trousers with a grimace. He had spent the past few minutes thinking of all manner of unpleasant things to stop the sensation of his dick hardening while you were in the room, it had worked to some extent, he was only at half-mast when you shut the door. In the time he waited for you to come rushing back in however, it had gotten progressively worse, absolutely strainng to be physically released from his clothes. There was no way his erection was going away by itself, and you could finish up with Roya any time, and he didn't want to turn his back to you away from the embraces you gave, and he certainly didn't want to rub it up against you or he wasn't sure how he'd be able to cope without wanting to touch you.   
  
"Bitch," he hissed under his breath, your smirk still imprinted his mind, firing the jealousy inside of him. "  
  
"Complete," he gave a heavy breathe, pulling his cock out in one motion out of his trousers "-utter, bitch.."  
  
Part of him knew you were winding him up, being vindictive, but just the dirty talk an the images conjured, the thought of you with you hands in your front and rubbing your cunt just drove shivers down his back as he cursed your name.  
  
He looked down and added his other hand, the force of his arm knocking the  moonshine - he didn't care, he was large enough that both hands felt better. He pictured you sliding fingers inside yourself an squealing with delight, before moving those same fingers to another woman.  
  
' _I touched her and I couldn't stop'_ a low growl left him, were you really that dominant?    
  
_'I fucked her the way only Essosi fuck best. Passionate, and mercilessly._ ' He pictured you between a woman's legs, torturing her with your tongue, running it in rhythmic circles around her pussy, going all night and morning as promised, making her cum until she cried, until her body gave out.  
  
_'Mercilessly'._  
  
The angry thoughts and jealousy started getting interrupted by the franticness of his masturbating, pumping his cock with a mounting desperation to finish quickly, feeling heat coursing through his cock and his face.  
  
' _Gods. Yes. Show me how you fuck. Show me how Essosi women fuck.'_  
  
Sandor glanced at himself when he felt the sliding sensation of his hands get slicker and smoother - a little wet, and it drove him wilder, breathing deeply and heavily, only now noticing the reems of clear fluid - precum dribbling down both hands like he hadn't done it in decades. Emptying himself in that whore had done  _nothing_  - the sexual tension remained there like a high river damn holding back a tsunami the second you felt like stoking the fires or inadvertently turned him on - and you didn't even know it.  
  
"Bitch," he hissed under his breathe at the thought of you, his heart beating loudly in his chest, knees hitting up against the table slightly but making the whole thing move with a small noise.    
  
' _Show me how wet you are, Gods. Show me how Essosi women fuck, practice on me.'_ he pictured the whore from that night, only that her hair was more like yours an how he took her from behind, hands digging into her thighs and pushing them apart, hips pressed against her ass as he had to try to slide his large self into a woman who simply was trying too hard but wasn't nearly ready enough.   
  
He pictured it so that it was you, your ass, your thighs, and the sensation of precum wetting down the length of his cock with the sensation of what it would be like to be gloved deep inside of your pussy and he could barely handle it beyond a few heavy thrusts into one hand while the other frantically pumped, sending flicks of clear fluid into the air from the rapid pumping motions of up and down, up and down.  
  
He'd touched himself to you plenty before, when you left on errands and his leg was still too broken to move, often out of boredom mixed with arousal, and feel himself when he was ready to cum. This time, Sandor had gotten up suddenly, sending the chair he was on falling onto its back, His cock came before his mind could catch up, his body washed with the sensation orgasm because he could realize what was happening.   
  
The sound he made was pathetic and unreplicatable too, knees buckling as he fell to the floor in the puddle of moonshine.  
  
"-Shh-i-i-t,  fucking _\- shiiiiit--!"_ his voice crackling, usually, he was quiet, and without fanfare, maybe it was because he was incredibly drunk. He was usually quite heavy - and came in excess often, but it was usually slow and a fairly easy clean up, he didn't expect to be blinded behind the eyes at the thought of actually fucking you as he fucked his hands and fantasized about your wet cunt to just  _spray_ everywhere, with no control.   
  
When he was reduced to panting and his vision aligned, the dull throb in his hands was covered in white, with a puddle growing on the floor, mixing with the alcohol. Gods, he'd never had such a satisfying wank in a while, but he didn't think he'd ever climaxed so embarrassingly either, and was equally thankful for the privacy as he looked at the mess before him - it had to have been the booze.  
  
Bugger.  
  
  
\----  
  
  
"Wow It's all gone, how much did you manage to drink in an hour?" you said, picking up the empty jug in shock, crawling into your nightgown as Sandor pointedly looked away.  
  
"Well you had your chance," he half-slurred, laying on the bed with a clean hand on his forehead temperature slowly cooling.   
  
With a worried frown, you crawled into the bed, and looked at him - he was red in the face, and the ears, even the neck, like he'd eaten an unusually spicy meal and couldn't take it.  
  
"Are you okay? Did you drink too much?" you'd heard of moonshine so strong it could make you blind and honestly worried for Sandor, and even his drunk ass could detect it and he sighed, he was doubtful how much he'd remember anyway.  
  
  
"S'fine," he said with a yawn "-just needed to tug myself off," he was forever blunt and callous, and the alcohol made it worse, but your eyes went very wide- cheeks heating as he nodded off right there and then.  
  
Did you cause - with the teasing - did he really - was  _he_ teasing?   
  
You took a shaky breathe and slid under the thin sheet, and wondered how much he'd remember in the morning.  
  
  
"N...night to you too," you blew out the candle, and stewed in your thoughts, the room reeking of alcohol and lavender the whole of the night.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. Mother's Mercy

_The spiciness of that last chapter and how many reads it got must mean a good thing? Well, I hope that means you like the story overall, and if you really do enjoy it, consider dropping a comment? I really do like them.  
x---_ **Chapter 5: Mother's Mercy**  
  


 

  
Watching Sandor Clegane move like this was like watching art in motion, especially to the well-trained maester eye and Gods, you thought, you'd have to be blind to not admire it in general. You had to wonder why nobody else did, and why nobody else looked at him in this way? Was his face that devastating that it ruined every other physical quality, was everyone really so terribly blind?  
  
You were watching him load some of your things onto the horse - an extra bag brought to put his armour in and less delicate things, so you could have less of your ingredients crushed. He was wearing a sack-cloth material shirt and dark, matching bottoms. It was the sort of thing designed to get dirty and, having run some errands for some quick silver when his leg had been better to limp on, he had gotten a decent bit of labour in. Around the shoulders, the material was frayed and ripped, if it had sleeves once - it didn't now, not that you were surprised, his biceps might have been the size of a child's skull and he probably ripped them off just so his arms could move freely.  
  
He was positively massive, and you had to wonder how much bigger his brother - The Mountain, must be, to have a name like The Mountain - and associating such a gargantuan size with such unrelenting cruelty, you were rather glad you didn't lay eyes on the man.  You studied Sandor quietly, waiting for him to notice you - delicately holding a large, clay cup with a steamy wisp emitting from the top. Your eyes were watching his back again, muscles flexing and tensing as he packed the horse with their fair supplies from their time in the Grassy Vale, most of it from your skills, as he hadn't been up and about long - and his broken leg still wasn't "fixed" - just slightly less worse.  
   
It wouldn't get better if he pushed it, either, so there's that.  
  
You had to wonder just how hard his body worked to get a man of that size functioning, how much blood was in his system, how the Gods must have spent extra time in crafting him, because broken leg aside, he was absolutely prime specimen of humanity to a doctor's eyes.   
  
Yes, you were marvelling a bit, others might have regarded it a creepy sort of way to check someone out, but to you, it was essentially the highest compliment you could give - not that you'd say it out loud of course.  
  
There was last night to consider, where he said  - that - and then just nodded off, before even managing to submerge himself in your embrace, he was simply out like a light and red like he'd ran the length of the coast. The only way you were able to sleep peacefully was by telling yourself it was all a callous, drunken joke, or that if it wasn't, it was nothing to do with you and was just a man being....a man.  
  
It really should have grossed you out, it was such an uncouth thing to admit, but everyone did it, or at least, every man did, but it just drove shivers down your spine, and you had to wonder if it was because you thought it might have been to do with what you said to him, or if it was from thinking of him in a sexual manner at all. You weren't even sure if it was disgust you were feeling, it was something, and you didn't linger on the thought.  
  
When he turned around and saw you, he glanced immediately to the too-large cup and then at your expectant face.  
  
"I don't know if you're a big fan of tea, but this particular blend will help a little bit with your hangover, that moonshine knocked you on your ass," you said bluntly, pro-offering it to him in a no-nonsense sort of tone.  
  
  
"Down it slow, it works better if you pace it," knowing full well he'd probably glug it the way he drinks his ales. He took it silently and without thanks, and you, expecting that level of gratitude, resisted the urge to roll your eyes as you walked away - until he called after you.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I was thinking," he said, leaning against a wall of the stable and having some of the tea, somehow not pulling a face at the taste "-we have a choice, the Stormland ports, or carry on a straight trip to Dorne,"  
  
You scowled, Dorne? Where had that come from?  
  
"Are you sure you'd want to go there after....." you trailed off, before clearing your throat "-tales of your brother's brutality reached even Essos after he crushed the Martell prince's head like a walnut," you said bluntly.  
  
"The Essosi people are, to a degree, more used to brutality and horror than the Dornish, and are just removed enough that the outrage didn't hit us as hard, however, I can't imagine you'd get much of a warm reception in Dorne who are likely still reeling from the murder of their crown prince  - can I ask what's brought this on?" you said with a light frown.  
  
"Well, if not here, then maybe Dorne is safer for you," said the man shortly "-you seem to do better in places that actually make good use of you. Dorne is better to their women, I have no problem admitting that,"  
  
You gave him an owlish look, not really sure what to say in the face of such blatant concern from someone you regarded as entirely cold - and then, well, then it started to make sense, after a little thought. Maybe he was fishing for more about your past, and didn't know enough about Essos, because to most Westerosi, only the Dornish bastards took the name Sand, and it was mostly uneducated belief that last names carried such weight in Essos. You simply hadn't bothered to correct it for the longest time.  
  
That, and you really did have some sort of claim to Westerosi nobility, even if you'd never so much as known the kingdom your father had hailed from, with that in mind, simple and utter omission of the last name seemed strange, because your roots were strange, and you had every right to acknowledge it.  
  
You told as much to Sandor, who was now looking at curiously, no doubt wanting to know your noble heritage, but you weren't particularly concerned with it, as you didn't really have intention of making a claim to it, there would be no way you would be received warmly if you did. It was complicated.  
  
"I spent some time in Dorne," you admitted "-Mother took me there, it was there that I was told to embrace the fact I was a bastard, and as we share seas and such closeness with Dorne, it isn't unusual to have the odd Sand bastard wandering the coasts of Essos, just...uncommon,"  
  
"It is the only way I acknowledge that I have any meaningful root in Westeros without making a claim," you explained, and he just seemed confused.  
  
"Well, why wouldn't you?" he said flatly "-there'd be some security, maybe even lodgings, some sort of grounding and support if your name carries enough wait. You're turning down free,"  
  
You were confused, at first, until you realized that Sandor had made the assumption that your noble leanings originated in Dorne and hence may be warmer to a bastard, and not just that Sand was out of convenience, proximity and the fact that Essos had no regional bastard name to impart upon you.  
  
"They wouldn't so readily welcome a bastard, my father didn't hail from Dorne, like you're thinking, he was a knight from....well, I'm not sure where he's from, I'm not familiar with house ruled territories, but he was a knight," you took pause, and gave the burned man a positively dour look.  
  
"Therefore, a prick,"  
  
He was going to press for your house origins, just out of curiosity, but the purposeful omission didn't go unnoticed, even if Sandor wasn't an intellectual, he was more perceptive than people would take him for.  
  
"If we're playing the questions game, I could just as easily ask why you don't go back to whatever holding the name Clegane has," you said pointedly, to which he ordinarily wouldn't rise to, except there was some quid pro quo to be had, and you had clearly divulged something you didn't really want to discuss much, so he felt obliged to give way just a little.   
  
"Because it's my brother's and I already have to share the same Earth, I'd rather not share the same house," he said icily.  
  
Your mouth fell open - almost to berate, until you remembered this was Gregor Clegane we were talking about, and the look you gave the man was utterly inscrutable. What must it have been like to live with such a cruel giant -  _and be the smaller one?_  
  
"Oh," was all you managed, cogs turning behind your eyes as he stared down at you, finishing the tea and silently handing you the cup.  
  
"We'll save this for when we're drunk enough to get your life story," he said pointedly, a ghost of a smirk on his face, whereas you had just come to the conclusion as to why the Free Cities were so important for Sandor to get to.  
  
  
It wasn't just leaving everything behind, it was leaving behind the legacy of one of the most famous fighters of Westeros - The Mountain, and taking his own, as he was decently known in his own right, and forging himself a new beginning, well out of his shadow, after all, you reasoned, growing up compared to.... _that,_ how possibly could it have been a good thing?  
  
"Right, right," you murmured, because drinking had certainly loosened  _his_ tongue, it stood to reason it'd do the same for you.  
  
The ride was quiet, because saying goodbye to a place as nice as the Grassy Vale was a genuinely hard thing to do, and you weren't looking forward to the complications of getting a boat. There was some kinship for stranded natives, if you were lucky, and you'd said as much, but dryly told him not to bank on it.  
  
"The kindness of strangers is unfortunately an unstable currency," was what you'd said. Essos was a brutal sort of place, the culture of romance was a largely Dornish influence that took most of it's flight to Braavos and then beyond the wall that separated nobility in Volantis, but beyond that, it could be an unforgivably brutal place in a way that Westeros does not quite match.  
  
You warned him of it anyway.  
  
"Are you worried I won't be able to withstand Essos?" he snorted.  "Essos won't be able to withstand  _me,"_  
  
He said it with such conviction that for a moment, you couldn't dare doubt it either. His simple words again reminding you how he was much like a storm in a teacup, or a rage that came in like the tides. For a second, you even pitied the people on the edge of his sword, and again had to wonder how you had first found him so close to death.  
  
The questions admittedly, were to stop you missing the Grassy Vale, and to fill the long, untenable silences, of which there were plenty. Sandor wasn't much of a talker, and you were a wordsmith when it came to evading questions, so what was the point?  
  
  
Except, he wanted to know more, deep down, he wanted to. He didn't even have to soul search particularly deeply to reach this conclusion, because even outside of a sober mind, he had taken some sort of otherworldly interest in you that had made any other experience of being enamoured simply pale in comparison. It was just, he was never in any position to do anything about it, for one he was disfigured, secondly, while Clegane was a noble name, he made a point of not taking a vow and coming off as the least honourable sort, even if Gregor - who DID take the knight's vows, easily had that title.  
  
But you had touched his face, and pressed it against you, and held him without commentary.  
  
You didn't want to make a claim to nobility and from what little he knew about your past, there would be nobody riding in, handsomer, richer, kinder, softer - an all around better man, waiting to open you into their arms, to contend for your heart - or worse, armed with a political betrothal contract. You were a wildcard, an anatomy studying, bruise mending, scholar of the mind and medicines.  You were not a conventional woman of good standing and maybe that was why he was so uncertain - because he may actually stand a chance.  
  
It was uncharted territory.  
  
He didn't even know at first if he just wanted to fuck you, but if he just wanted to fuck, the whore should have been enough, but it wasn't, it just exacerbated whatever this feeling was. This feeling that rendered his stomach tight and his mind bound to thoughts he would sooner let go. It was easier to wait for it to ebb or to ignore it, knowing full well that to entertain this queer lust was an exercise in pointlessness, but now he was bothered with the thought of 'maybe it isn't.'  
  
But did it even matter, in the grand scheme of things?  
  
Sandor didn't know how to be anything but alone, and he got the sense that maybe, just maybe, you were like that too.  
  
\----  
  
You didn't look down on him for abandoning the Kingsguard, instead, you thought it was just a little brave, leaving during the Battle of Blackwater. Stupid, yes, but stupid brave, and there was no better chance to escape, just as you had from the Bolton takeover.  
  
You both stopped midway through the second day.  
  
 The camp site set up that overlooked mountains was a sure sign that Blackhaven was close, you made it known that you hated sleeping on the horse, and hated straight rides even more-so if it was more than a two day trip. This, even though it was a whine, it wasn't an unreasonable one, and Sandor was rather partial to rest also.  
  
He insisted you sleep first, because he planned to drink a little, so you did, or, tried, at any rate. The pattern broke where you were holding or held by, someone. The ground was cold, but the new blankets from the Grassy Vale were somewhat warm. He watched as you bundled up the blanket a bit so that you had something substantial to hold as you slept.  
  
The sleep wasn't as comfortable as Roya's inn, naturally, but there was some dull comfort to being guarded as you slept so openly. Not like the small bed in the maester's chambers back in the North, where all it took was someone to walk in on you changing and snapping off the binder to be affirmed in the long-suspected fact you were a woman. Many nights you even slept with it, and it was hellish.  
  
It was nice to be yourself, and not 'Grand Maester Vause' - a name that ill-suited you to begin with.   
  
It had been so long since you weren't Maester Vause, and you were just you, Vause wasn't even your given name, it was mothers first name, used as your last - a whole fake identity....  
  
_For a fake person._  
  
For a while, there was nothing, blissful, endless nothing. Some days, you regretted ever leaving Essos, where you could have just joined the temple, and avoided so much of the trouble that had magnetised itself to you. Your home in Volantis hadn't been grand, but it certainly wasn't poor, and for a region that didn't have much of a middle class, your mother did an excellent job in keeping you in relative wealth. There were very rare days where you were hungry.  
  
But oh, she was a terrifying woman.  
  
But still, you missed home - it was where you laid your head and didn't have to lie about who you were, though it wasn't without its faults, the only place you'd been under least threat other than a Stark-ruled Winterfell was Dorne. It almost made Sandor's random suggestion seem like it had some merit.  
  
Essos was a hard place to be free.  
  
You'd heard Daeneyrs was doing a lot in Meereen, but you didn't know that you had much faith in the woman, though your mother already spoke of a woman who might just be the next - God, she loved her holy texts, she entertained the idea that she might be a prophesied hero.  
  
You knew better than to believe in heroes.  
  
  
Regardless, you fell asleep thinking of mother.  
  
\----  
  
_"Oh Lord of Light, come to us in our darkness, and shine your glory unto us! Shine upon the false Gods of this world, and the fears that grip us so, expose the sins that hide in shadow, the blasphemy that tempts our unbidden souls, cast your glory upon them, and burn us through, for the night is dark, and full of terrors!" your mother swayed slightly to light the candles at the back of the the room, after lighting the ones along the walls, her dark eyes charged with purpose.  
  
When she looked at you, you shivered, gripping the ends of your dress._  
  
_Even as a little girl, you had to wonder why mother's prayers seemed to racked with terror, and guilt. Did she do something bad enough to atone for? You always had to atone, you were always asking questions, even when presented with the Holy Texts, and you had the gall to ask of "The Stranger," - mother had all but tore the book to shreds before your eyes, and then asked where you had gotten it.  
  
This book with the false God in it.  
  
"The nice man gave it to me, the one who was passing through to Slaver's Bay, he said he couldn't read anyways and he wanted to know where the lady house was, so...." you trailed off, and squeaked in slight terror when she had gabbed your wrist with so much force you wondered how it didn't pop from the bones it was attached to.  
  
"That milk-skinned Westerosi that's been pissing around the city?!"  
  
She inhaled sharply as you nodded, and let go of your wrist, before pawing at the dress on your eleven year old body. Her hands pulling at the fabric that draped around your waist, as though to emphasize it.   
  
"Do you think he gave you that out of the kindness of his heart?"  
  
"Do you think men do  **anything** out of kindness?"   
  
You stood rigidly still, feeling her tug harshly on your clothes, gesturing to your legs, tears prickling your eyes. Sometimes your mother was nice, but other times.....other times, like this.  
  
"He wanted to you to stray from the path and he saw a little womanhood in your legs and  **that** was why he gave you that book, if you take things from strangers, understand that there is always a cost!" she pursed her lips thinly "-if he wanted you, he'd have took you too. You do NOT talk to strangers, unless I tell you so. Tonight, you will start prayer, and we will burn your book, and you will beseech R'hllor for forgiveness,"  
  
And so there you were, watching with devastation as the book pages curled up on each other, and tuned a dark black.  
In that moment, you hated her.  
  
You hated her so much.  
   
"Are you sorry, are you ready to ask for forgiveness?"  
  
"Yes, mother," you glared.  
  
You were not sorry.  
  
Then she looked at you, with her charged, dark, stern eyes, lips drawn into a thin line, practically glowering at you tiny form.  
  
"Do not lie to me girl, not when I can see inside you, and see your sins just as surely as God can,"  
  
You fell quiet, and watched her open her mouth to berate you - eyes straining like they might pop from her skull in anger, her jaw opened widely, and fell as much as it could.  
  
Then it fell more, and more, and more still, distending, to allow for the skin-crawling screech that left it, like a wraith, or a banshee. It was painful, and agonizing, and it rang in your ears like the bell of the priesthood. It rang with terror instead of rage, and it lasted for what felt like decades._

 

  
\------

 

  
 You got up suddenly, head ringing and feeling a thick sheen of sweat over your body, blinking the world into view, your body screaming and being pulled awake so roughly and forced upright. You panted heavily, until Sandor's blurred figure came into view. There was nothing in your ears but the sound of that scream until you felt his heavy, large hand on your right shoulder, shaking you abruptly.  
  
“You awake?” he asked, as you finally squinted at him and began rubbing the sleep from your eyes.  
  
“Unfortunately,” yawning and being somewhat curt, your mouth tasted like shit, your head hurt and the night was still young, because Sandor was still awake drinking. Nothing was said as you slowly came to, but it was the smell of the leftover moonshine that was so strong that it made your eyelashes want to curl.  
  
“Drink up, you look like you need it,” he said darkly.  
  
If that was an insult, you were too tired to care, and took drinks of it in small, sweet shots. Your tongue wanted to gag on the acidity of it all, and your chest felt heavy the moment you took your first swallow from how strong it was – it was the kind of drink that went straight to the head – and you could see why he had memory lapses when drunk on the stuff.  
  
It was fucking strong.  
  
You fully expected to sit in silence too, drinking quietly by the embers of a dying fire, you stared at it – and glared and it some, before vindictively poking it with a stick.  
  
Sandor stared at you.  
  
This was the part where you didn’t talk and slept it off, or talked complete shit until he told you to shut up.  
  
“Want to talk about it?” he said gruffly, and you almost flinched at the suddenness of it – the silence since he woke you up had gone for so long that you’d even forgot he was there in favour of glaring at the fire.  
  
You gave him a look of surprise, like game that had just realized it’d had been shot, and in truth, your eyes stuck to staring at his face when he said that, for a second, you thought you imagined it, if not for how expecting he looked. Your eyes flickered to his burns, then to his neck, then the drink in your hands, and you blurted out such a random thing that he was at a loss as to what was possibly bothering you in your dream, he was just confused. Which was good, because you didn't feel like opening that can of worms.  
  
“I’m sorry I burned your neck!”  
  
Silence.  
  
He cocked a brow at you, and in that moment, you wished he was more readable.  
  
“It was necessary,” he conceded.  
  
He couldn’t say he was terribly proud of threatening you – he still recalled how he made you shake, but now it had healed, he hardly gave any thought to the cauterization since, it was hard to believe how viscerally angry he had gotten.  
  
He wondered, briefly, if you had a nightmare about it, or if it was a clumsy attempt in diverting the question by being so random.  
  
“Little Fox?” he tried, trying to snap you out of your queer daze, but your eyes fixated on his face and neck, he watched you crawling on your hands and knees over to him.  
  
  
His heart suddenly gave a series of faster beats, confusion colouring his features as you tiredly – and tipsily – crawled over his legs and you had all but mounted him – to get a good, close, look at his face. Sandor wasn’t sure what came over you, if it was whatever you dreamed about, the drink, or both, but you weren’t making much sense, so he just watched, wondering what would play out.  
  
“That must have hurt,” he thought you meant his neck, but he wanted to tell you the drug you’d given him had worked, it was the sting of the clean that made the cauterizing hurt, but then he felt your small, slit-ridden hand touching his rough, disfigured skin, and flinched.  
  
Oh.  
  
He didn’t know anyone so bold as to just touch it in the way that you did, but this time there was no medical purpose, this wasn’t the softness of your bosom either, it was just your hand. Your willing, intruding, but terribly gentle and unprompted hand.  
  
Anyone else and he’d have slapped the hand away, but now there might have even been a tempting urge to slowly tilt his head against your hand and encourage it, but he didn’t want to move – in case it stopped.  
He saw the fascination in your eyes and finally breathed out another question, this time in a low, rumbling tone that was almost a whisper.  
  
“What’re ya doing?”  
  
It had to be the booze.  
  
“Can you feel it, when I touch it?” you breathed, eyes wide – you heard from some documents on the flayed, if you went deep enough into the skin, you could stop feeling pain, you wondered if it was true of a deep burn, you wondered – even moreso from a dream that featured Mother’s scream, how badly it hurt.  
  
Sandor closed his eyes, this was surely part of his own dream that he was certain to wake up from, no doubt blacked out on the moonshine with his face in the grass - he was sure.  
  
“Not the way I should, but I feel something,” he answered surprisingly honestly. He did feel – when you touched it. It wasn’t the way the rest of his face felt when you touched it, less sensitive, like his senses had been shaved down and blunted, like the flesh was almost dead – but it was something.  
  
You wondered, briefly, if he screamed as long as your Mother had _–_ and then violently dismissed the thought.  
  
“What was your nightmare about?” Sandor tried again, not prising your hand off, just in quiet, drunken wonder that you were doing this in the first place, and how terribly, intimately close you were, even if you were touching him medically.  
  
He could still enjoy it.  
  
“Home,” you said shortly, frowning at the slurredness on the tip of your tongue – hearing yourself slur was what made you realize that you too, were drunk.  
  
You made an effort to change the subject anyway, but it was so clumsy and hamhanded that it didn’t stop Sandor at all, except that his heart momentarily caught in his throat at the randomness and choice of words you picked to veer off topic.  
  
“You’re really quite handsome you know,”  
  
‘What the hell kind of shit is she trying to pull?’ was the thought that came to mind, a somewhat agitated response on the tip of his tongue – a defensive, ego response, until he saw the earnest expression through your inebriation.  
  
“I can really see it this close,” you inspected him aloud, bravery pumping through your veins as your hand reluctantly let go of his face and you slid off of him, instead ingratiating yourself at his left side, nursing another shot of moonshine.  
  
You tilted your head up to look at him, your chin pressing into his arm as you did so, getting a side angle of his long hair and his face half-illuminated by moonlight. A wider grin bursting onto your numb face – which was losing the feeling of the evening cold from the strength of the alcohol content.  
  
“Shouldntha bothered with a whore, you shouldn’t have to pay, you’re really quite…” you searched for a word, drunken mind unable to come up with something suitable.   “-Cute,”  
   
Sandor choked on his drink and gave you a look like you’d grown an extra head.  
   
“Now I know you’re drunk,” he said, and he could now more easily detect the the unhappiness in your tone, and he vaguely wondered if you would ever truly let the whore incident go, and why it was such a big chip on your shoulder. He did learn from it though - that he could only disrespect you so far. The meaning of your words lost some impact, with the effect of it probably being the inebriation.  
  
"But, are you drunk enough for your life story, is the question?" he pressed, and you snorted, before making a gripe for the remaining moonshine.  
  
"Getting there,"  
  
You at one point, really wanted to throw up, but it'd be a horrible waste if you did, and so resigned yourself to the sickness in the morning. Your stomach gave a hard lurch, but at least you head and muscles didn't hurt anymore, in truth you couldn't feel much of anything.   
  
When it felt like your head could no longer be kept up by your neck - yes, that was drunk enough.  
  
"I keep thinkin' 'bout how empty my house is goin' to be," you slurred heavily, but he seemed like he understood you better than most. It seemed an effort to fight the urge to black out, but concentrating on talking clearly enough helped clear some of the fog of your mind, willing yourself awake.   
  
Mind over matter.   
  
"Mother's dead, father was dead even when he was alive," with a roll of your eyes, blissfully ploughing on over Sandor's confusion at your choice of phrasing, and you seemed terribly flippant about your parents death's. He wasn't sure if it was the alcohol.  "All alone now,"  
  
You let out a sickly burp from the moonshine, resisting the need to draw your legs up to you chest, betraying the same thing you'd said to Katlana, with as much elegance but much less emotion, just drunken carelessness.  
  
"Nobody in the whole world," you yawned "-nothin' between me 'n the madness," you burrowed against his side, unable to feel the chill, or look at his face of slight surprise.  
  
You were shitfaced, and rather vulnerable.  
  
_"Ab....sloutely.... fuckin'......nothin'.._." punctuating the syllables as heavily as you could manage.  
  
"Should be happy now, 'm free, "  
  
You swallowed the urge to be sick, and the bile in your throat - rather audibly too - which made the knight worry that you might have actually hit your limit of what your body could take. You didn't even remember telling your mouth to say what it saying, but it was cleaning your body of the feelings you stubbornly kept festering within. Or it felt like you were. The feelings would still be there in the morning.   
  
Only now they weighed a little less.   
  
"Should be,"  
  
Which implied you weren't....because you weren't. You sagged at his side, resisting the urge to be sick. Funnily enough, being drunk wasn't much of an escape, but it was cathartic in its own way, because it forced your emotions out, instead of keeping them in a vice until they had no choice but to ooze through after hitting some sot of limit.  
  
There was a long silence, but it seemed heavy in a strange sort of way, because he knew he had you vulnerable, and could ask anything, but didn't really know where to begin, or how much he even wanted to know.  
  
Not in the least because he was sure you'd both part ways once in Essos and you'd given him some sort of direction - and that parting, he wasn't sure if he'd be ready for it, if he started caring anymore than he did beyond being simply enamoured.  
  
Gods, damn uncharted territory.  
  
"What happened to your hands?" his low, deep voice had a strangely cautious edge to it, one you weren't used to hearing come from his mouth. He was usually rather uncaring in his delivery of most lines, but this was different.  
  
Maybe the alcohol had made him more sensitive, you mused.  
  
You kept your eyes shut, shuddering as the cold started to feel noticeable, though still feeling like you might be drunk, it as like being in a strange twilight, except that it was not peaceful, your stomach awash with the need to expunge itself of the moonshine filth you had plied it with.   
  
The question was no more random than your actions earlier, but it seemed to be the cost of not talking about your dreams, your memories, or much of your life.  
  
Too bad it was all part of the same past.  
  
"They got cut, in a slit, many times," you said blandly.  
  
"I can see that, I'm not simple, just thought you were drunk enough to cut the shit but apparently not," said Sandor, frustration covered by his general abrasiveness being so terribly normal to you.  
  
"Mhmmm...." you let out a long noise of agreement, before sighing to yourself.  "Mother's mercy," you murmured under your breath, because really, that's what it was.  
  
The scars on your hands were mother's mercy.  
  
"Doesn't matter, she's dead," though you weren't sure who you were trying to convince, and you didn't bother looking at his expression of curiosity and deftly hidden anger at all the little implications you carelessly dropped, but didn't deign in explaining.  Then he was annoyed at himself for taking such an interest, which was an exercise in pointlessness, because it would only foster attachment, and attachment was unneeded. It was bad enough that earlier he was entertaining this thought process, in truth, it might be easier to stick to what he knew - how to be alone, a rough, callous, angry prick.  
  
His thought process was interrupted by the noise of gulping you'd made, wrenching your eyes open.  
  
Swallowing a thick load of bile, you looked up at the stars, watching as they danced in your blurry vision, and staying awake became hard once your stomach finally settled. The back of your head was resting lazily on one of Sandor's huge biceps, and so long as you didn't move too quick and agitate the alcohol induced sickness, it was almost a moment you could live in.  
  
"She's dead and I'm...."  you furrowed your brow, struggling to find a word that was all the feelings you had working at the same time, even against each other.  
  
_Free?  
  
Alone?  
  
Sad?  
  
Happy?_  
  
_Bitter?  
  
Angry?_  
  
  
"I'll be okay,"  
  
You'll be okay. Implying you weren't okay.  
  
With you, Sandor very quickly learned it was all the unsaid things that he should worry about.  
  
"I wish you'd quit your mysterious bullshit," he sighed, exhausted with you as he was enamoured, and you - well, in truth, any feelings beyond ambivalence and grudging camaraderie, you hadn't really picked up on anything else.  
  
For someone rather smart, you could be rather stupid.   
  
"And I wish you'd quit your asshole routine," you shot back tiredly. You were rather aware you had a habit of attaching yourself to a single person, then struggling to maintain a fraction of caring for others, so long as you had a rock, and when mother died, it was a habit you had to kick by force. You had to raise yourself after that, and unlearn a lot of things, on top of just pick things up. Now, you were a little frightened you'd let yourself be that weak and dependant on Sandor, and you never wanted to be weak again.  
  
Never again.  
  
Sandor didn't even notice when you passed out, until he heard quiet, tiny snores on his shoulder, and had the job of trying to move you very delicately so that you did not wake, to put you in your bedroll, but not before a small, golden ring, slid itself out of your pocket, baring a signet. He slipped it back into your pocket without a word.

 

  
  
\-----

 

  
Sandor outright laughed at you in the morning, because the very first thing you’d done – before so much as a “Morning,” was spring up like an animal and hurl yourself over a large rock and let out a stream of vomit. He was only somewhat hungover, now more prepared for the moonshine after experiencing it at Roya’s inn, and actually knowing he could handle more than you. You, small as you were, hit your limit pretty quickly and easily, and were now paying for it at sunrise.  
  
  
He didn’t act any differently to his usual self, which, considering how close you had gotten (and almost gotten) with him the night prior was unsettling.  
  
But that was just how Sandor dealt with emotions – by not dealing with them, or simply being angry.  
  
He truly was not a simple man, and if he had things to ask you (and oh, how he did) – he would lay in wait, and take opportunities to pry when they came, as opposed to trying to make one, like he had done the night prior.  
  
The clopping to Blackhaven was dreadfully quiet, save for your occasional groans of pain, and hissing at the sunlight, wishing you had some of that tea that was available at the Grassy Vale.  
  
Sandor was still in two minds about how to approach you in regards to forming an attachment, but had decided he was probably thinking about it too much, and to simply take each day as it came. If he didn’t, he was certain he’d go mad long before either of you reached the coast.  
  
  
Blackhaven itself was an okay holding, clearly some large families belonged there, but it was not a patch on the Grassy Vale in terms of beauty, but some of the architecture would be to die for, had you not been in such a shitty mood. Having already tussled with Lord Beric when travelling with Arya, the Hound was not surprised when there was no resistance to entry. The Brotherhood Without Banners had more than enough respect for his prowess now, so word must have reached the keep of Blackhaven.  
  
“Oh, just find an inn to dump me in, you can go ask about a boat, I’m useless right now,” you moaned, and he rolled his eyes.  
  
“Seriously,” you grimaced “-I wouldn’t want to deal with me right now, but maybe you can go find some traders, this place seems…like it seats a good few houses probably, there’s got to be more than smallfolk,”   
  
“I don’t expect you to come back with a deed for a boat, but just ask around and see if they even have access to any, how much they hold, if they’ll be any sails to Essos, just – schmooze a bit,”   
  
Sandor schmoozing was a bizarre idea, as the man was terribly antisocial, however, he was good at getting what he wanted.  
  
“I’m going to make for the Keep first, I’ll drop you off somewhere and you rest,”  
  
You didn’t need to be told twice.  
  


 

\----  
  


 

Roothorn Inn was a quiet sort of place, not as bubbly as Roya's - and it didn't smell nearly as nice. The bed was smaller, but softer, and the room walls were painted a strange beige, though marred with bits of dirt. The sleep had certainly helped, and you gave a long, languid stretch on the small double bed, hearing the door open with a squeaking creak.  
  
  
"Are you back already? Forget something did you?" you yawned, not looking at the direction of the door, only for an oily and unfamiliar voice to wash over you instead.  
  
  
"You're the one travelling with the Hound," you froze at the feeling of tension that rose, and shot up at the bed, had turning sharply to the door. It looked like a coal-boy, from the sheer amount of coal stains all over the small, weedy boy-child's face, he had to be young, fourteen maybe? Too young for his lungs to be as soot-filled as they likely were.  
  
"He has a lot of balls to be back here," there was a pause - and then...  "I've no idea why Lord Beric let him go the last time he crossed through here but he as a fool to come back,"  
  
  
"And if you don't leave him, I'm afraid that's a lesson you're going to learn quickly," you gave the boy an odd look - was he threatening you?  
  
He saw the dangerous look on your face and apologised profusely, before nervously wringing his hands on his frayed beige tunic.  
  
  
"I saw you riding into town," he said, speaking a common-drawl "-so did the people who don't like him very much," he looked down at his feet.  
  
  
"A lot of men want to kill The Mountain, but some may settle for his brother,"  
  
  
Your gut froze, and you got up off the bed, stalking over to the boy who let out a frightful sound as you grabbed him by the scruff of his collar.   
  
  
"Who're you, why are you telling me this?" you eyes narrowed as he reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small, golden item, fingers close to shaking because you were exerting an unexpected, brutish sort of force.  
  
  
"B-because he's protecting you my Lady, and you uhm, you dropped this," when he presented the ring, you grimaced - it had a habit of falling out of your pocket when you put other stuff in there, and it must have - God - when?  
  
You looked at the door behind him, and kicked it with your shoe, slamming the door with a bang.  
  
  
"Alright child, you and me need to have a talk, can you keep a secret?"  
  
  
  



	6. Deadhaven

 This place, the boy said – a curse has befallen it. You should have rode right the way through and not stopped. You had read him all wrong, and you had burned the hours together – definitely.  
He told you everything too, unlike Sandor – every question had an answer, even if it wasn’t one you wanted to hear.  
  
You learned his name was Cadmius.  
  
“What peasantry names their son Cadmius?” and at this, he reared an expression you’d only ever seen on the injured prideful face of a horse, though the question had been posed in jest and with a smile.  
  
“My father is no peasant!” and from a boy covered in soot and such beaten rags, the statement was laughable, but he tugged at your hand insistently now in a very forward way. For someone of higher birth it was not a well-mannered gesture, but he seemed to forgo it – for you. “I’ll show you, come on!”  
  
He all but dragged you from that inn, and grudgingly, you followed him into the deeper recesses of Blackhaven, and found them wanting.  
  
You grimaced as you stepped in what seemed like pure filth, and vendors you’d passed on horseback – upon closer inspection, had little stock and sliced their bread loafs thin. The vendor himself, while a portly man, his clothes did not fit him as they should, and he seemed thin in the face. You wondered if he had a case of the sickness, and nearly asked, if the boy had not pulled you to the gully first. He pointed a sooty finger to the lines formed at the bread vendor, and the sizeable queue that had formed.  
  
There was a woman who looked pregnant, the maester in you – and the woman in you, wanted to go over to her, and ask her of her health, but that was not where Cadmius was pointing.  
  
“That’s my father,” he said proudly, and pointed to a man who was adorned in dirty beige. Through crusts of dirt you could see intricate patterns of black that had been woven onto it. His shoes, with finery and patterns, had also been covered to the brim in muck, shit and heavens knows what else. He looked noble, or maybe, noble once, but now – he looked…well, a like an actor that had stayed in their costume long after the play had wrapped up.  
  
“Lord of House Brisbane, a small house we are – were – but pure as can get and been here since Blackhaven were in its baby steps. Every rebellion, every battle, we still lived, even when The Mountain sacked the lands, always still. We were here,” said Cadmius.  
  
You frowned – even in Essos, a poorer place than Westeros, the nobility had never quite become so dirty, and you’d seen plenty of Westerosi nobles before the Boltons came in the North.  
  
“What is wrong with this place?”  
  
He tugged your hand, and gave you a strange sort of smile.  
  
“Oh plenty ma’am. Come on, you need to see the Deep Market,” you gave him a quizzical look – there was more?  
  
People stared at you briefly but not for long, you cringed at the myriad of shoulders that bumped against you carelessly. Stepping deeper into the muck, the Deep Market just seemed sadder, and more unfortunate. How? It was all so bleak, you weren't sure you wanted to go in any deeper, and told Cadmius such.  
  
"The Keeps are nice, well, the big ones. It's nicer over there. Not by much, but if we go out of the Deep Market, we can get there,"  
  
Oh, wasn't that where Sandor would be? You turned to the dirty faced boy, and resisted the urge to wipe his cheeks with your sleeve, and finally untethered your hand from him.  
  
"Enough, lead me back to the inn, I'm sorry I made a pass about your name. I believe you, you're nobility, just - take me back," slight agitation oozing into your tone.  The boy's expression faltered for a moment, and his shoulders sagged, before leading you back the mucky alleys. You trudged after him, trying to steer clear of it all and push out of the bustling of people that were rife with tension and poverty.   
  
"I say, what happened to this place?" you knew not everywhere could be like the Grassy Vale but a place as big as Blackhaven having so much poverty was a shock to the senses - the fact it reminded you of Westeros.  
  
"Oh, everything," said Cadmius, before turning to give you a quizzical look, but he was rather pleased that he'd gotten to you, and you weren't sure why. "Can I ask why you're travelling with the Hound?"  
  
You frowned, and got to an answer - or thought you had, anyway, as the mention of the Hound sprung the catalyst for concluding that perhaps the Mountain's sacking of the lands had done this.   
  
"Did The Mountain do all this?"  
  
Cadmius snorted, and to your credit, didn't treat your innocent conclusion with derision, but merely shook his head.   
  
"Lots of things did this Ma'am, the Mountain were but a storm in a long wave of shit, and it were a while ago, if you'll pardon my gutter tongue. I low-born noble I may be, but I've forgotten how to hold myself in higher presence,"  
  
You scowled, and wished him silent, but didn't say it, merely hissing him to keep his voice down low as Roothorn came into view.  
  
"I'm a bastard with a fancy ring in her pocket," you said icily, before he turned and gave you a bright grin.  
  
"With skin like toasted soft loaf, but eyes like - well, if you went to the keep you'd see the oil paintings madam, is no mistaking, that's why I had to run to you when I picked up that ring. I thought you just...procured it somehow, but then I saw your face and figured it honestly yours,"  
  
You rolled your eyes and kept the trek on to the inn as he babbled, honestly he seemed a little touched in the head, especially making such a big assumption like that and then going with it senselessly just because it fit with his reality.  
  
It was just annoying that he was right.  
  
"Everyone were staring daggers, do they dislike the Hound that much? Plenty of stories reached Essos about The Mountain, less of his brother," you opted to change the subject, and the sooty boy allowed it.  
  
"Oh yes, you haven't heard them?"   
  
And so he told you the stories, all of them - the ones he grew up with, the ones he'd heard, there was never much comparison made between the brothers but on the rare instances that Cadmius did, he always insisted that The Mountain were in a league entirely of his own.   
  
You felt your heart plummeting into your stomach, and you'd been angry at the man for shagging a whore - when he'd done so much worse. The thing that bothered you the most however, was that you couldn't find it in you to be angry or wholly disgusted. In fact, as people went, you could still argue that your mother was her own league of awful, and it had made you somewhat desensitised to the things coming out of Cadmius's mouth.  
  
"But Lord Beric let him go, so he can't be that bad," he said, more for your benefit - that was another thing, a Lord trying to make a non-political group that didn't operate for reward - The Brotherhood Without Banners - it probably got popular from those that remembered The Mountain's pillaging and raping spree. So how did it all come to this? Was it because the Lordship wasn't taking control and was too focused on equity of outcome rather than taking his seat and managing the economy and political dance that kept a land strong under a land baron?  
  
It was a matter that required some research, as did how House Brisbane managed to fall.  
  
"Oh it isn't just my house My Lady, many who stayed to their roots in Blackhaven have fallen like this, the ones that didn't were smart enough to leave," said Cadmius with a tiny little shrug.  "It's a smallfolk town now,"  
  
"I remember being little and my father telling me not to talk to the coal boys, now I am one,"   
  
You frowned a little, and had him walk you to your room, and stood outside the door, about to dismiss him. But then you saw the look on his face, like he expected something else from you.  
  
"Will you be going to the Keep, Ma'am?"   
  
You shook your head a no.  
  
"Not if I can avoid it," he visibly sagged, and was about to say something, until the sound of people jeering seeped into the inn when the door to the bedroom hallway was swung open by an elderly patron. The boy lit up, and this time didn't grab your hand with need - having learned his lesson - and merely held it out, silently beckoning you to take it. Considering you'd made him look like you'd killed his pet by saying you wouldn't visit the Keep and assumedly, announce your presence as a bastard of highborn status, you grudgingly took it, mostly out of curiosity - what was going on outside?  
  
"Oh, it's a pelting My Lady!"  
  
You stood outside the inn, tired of going up and down the stairs now, and leaned up beside the door next to Cadmius.   
  
The streets which had been lined with people queuing for meagre portions of bread and undesirable slips of liver were now split down the middle, with adults getting onto their knees to scoop fistfuls of dirt and throwing it into the centre of the city. You frowned - being short as you were, couldn't see what they were pelting at.   
  
Cadmius blinked and gave a look of surprise as you mounted the window of Rootthorn and easily climbed up onto the sloping portion of their roof to see over the heads of the crowd. What you saw made your chest hurt.  
  
It was a man, covered in muck and filth, hoisting a large beam of wood, which seemed to be weighted by sand bags that held something or other - flammable powder apparently. His job was to drag it to the pyres for the amount of sick and dying Blackhaven had, unless you had land that bore a crypt, there was too many simply dying to bury them all, and many wanted to keep the land pure to try to farm their own crop in such a poor economy.  
  
You hopped down and gave Cadmius a worried look. You'd seen something like this before, except back in Essos - it didn't end with a pelting.  
  
"Who is that? What did he do?"  
  
"That's Lord Turias," said Cadmius with a little frown "-his wife is sick, I play with their child, Honrial sometimes. I heard some people calling him a hoarder, and a thief - and there were rumours he was keeping food in his storages but I didn't think it were true,"  
  
"I don't understand, what's wrong with that?" now you were well and truly confused.  
  
"It's okay to have what you save, nothing against a small kitchen stock, but you're not supposed to keep your own food storages anymore, you're supposed to share like everyone else, and take from the vendor lines," he explained.  
  
You still didn't quite understand, and found yourself pushing through the thick mass of peasant bodies, if Cadmius couldn't give you an answer, by God you'd get it yourself.  
  
"Lord Turias!" you shouted, but it was drowned out easily in the crowd "- _Lord Turias!"_  
  
It was no use.   
  
You grimaced as he was hit in the side of the head with a rock, and it drew some blood, but he didn't fall, dragging the wood beam. He wasn't built for manual labour any more than you were, and this was a slow dragging process - a punishment, you realised.  
  
You couldn't watch this, you realised - it was too similar to -  
  
God, it could happen again, couldn't it?  
  
You made your mind up in a moment, and pushed yourself into the centre, and jogged up to Turias, who had dirty black hair and dull, green-blue eyes. You'd have gone directly beside him but it'd put you in pelter's path even more.  
  
"Go back to the crowd ya stupid girl," Turias hissed, almost buckling with every step he took, you frowned and moved under the beam. It was a moment of instant regret when you felt the heaving weight want to shatter your spine and shoulders, but it was so much more bearable with Turias doing the bulk of it. You were still a small Essosi woman, the heaviest thing you'd lifted were buckets and soon, you felt the crowd pelting you too.  
  
"What're you doing?" Turias shouted forward, unable to turn his head to you.  
  
"Just keep going!" your eyes searched for Cadmius in the crowd, but he'd all but disappeared, and you'd shoehorned yourself into rather grim business, with no out in sight.  
  
Hells.  
  
  
\------  
  
  
Sandor wasn't sure what he was going to find, but he hadn't moved with such urgency in a while, and he'd frightened the poor coal boy from the speed and aggression from which he'd drawn his sword. The smallfolk had split like the red sea, and he was following Cadmius.   
  
He didn't know why the coal boy had wanted him so badly until he had all but screamed your name and that had been enough.  
  
His wild eyes followed the young boy who was now in a sprint, and the crowd parted for the monumental presence of the Hound. He expected to be slicing people down, and not so long ago he'd have done so to the crowd just to part it faster, but he didn't, he caught sight of you carrying the beam and yelling to the man who bore the brunt of it. You were digging, trying to get answers, mouth moving, unfailing even as rocks had started to hit you too. You carried on like a woman possessed. It didn't make sense, but all he saw was the bruise on your cheek, and though Lord Turias was in a much worse state than you, you were all he could see, and that was enough.  
  
The beam had been lifted from both your shoulders and half-slung into the direction of the crowd that was pelting from the left side at least, which dispersed a good portion, the sight of a snarling, disfigured Hound with sword in hand that could swing a beam that took more than two to carry was enough to make his orders travel far.  
  
  
"If I see a hand throwing any more crap, it's getting cut off. Turn around, and go inside. The shitshow's over!"  
  
Your head span, and it was Lord Turias looking at you now, with his verdant blue-green eyes and covered in sweat. He had blood on his face, his lip was cut, and his temple was bruised. He was still telling you things - things you'd asked, but Gods, was he confused - why anyone would try to help him carry his burden to begin with. He even wondered if he was hallucinating.  
  
"Which of the Seven sent ye?"  
  
You ignored him, and you choked, feeling the pain now of being pelted in your body as Sandor had stalked over and you felt his large, hulking arms, before you could protest, he lifted you like a sack of potatoes, utterly ignoring Lord Turias.  
  
"Roothorn, Cadmius - your son, he knows how to find me, lay low,"  
  
He was saying something to you, but you couldn't hear him anymore, Sandor had lifted your aching body, but his lips could not be read any other way.  
  
It was 'Thank You' - pure and simple.  
  
It was even worth the royal telling off you had received,  You looked up and all you could see was his beard at first, and then he tilted his head and you could see his eyes almost glowering at you, the sort of look that had made a person freeze in terror, only gave you a soft, and stupid, pained smile.  In your mind - it made sense, Cadmius must have gone to fetch the Hound - he didn't leave you, and the Hound - he was.... he was...  
  
  
"There now Little Fox, you're safe now," he breathed out low, and the dressing-down had been worth it. He hadn't shouted, like you thought he would, but he still delivered it in a way that stung. "I take my eyes off you for a moment, and you get yourself in trouble,"  
  
You decided to hang onto the first thing he said, because it made you warm inside, like your soul could sing, even if everything else hurt.  
  
He carried you to the inn, to the room, onto the bed - he didn't throw you down either, he set you down, and grabbed the bag you had deposited in the room and was going through it with no delicacy.  
  
"Tell me what to do," he said authoritatively, you gave him a quizzical look and he spoke slowly, like you'd been hit in the head.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Tell me what to do, you're--" he made various gestures to your body "-you're hurt,"  
  
You touched your cheek, where it stung - a sharp rock? And some bruising under the clothes, not much, you hadn't been pelted nearly so much as Lord Turias. You saw him looking at you, and wondered how much of it actually was concern, after all the stories you had been fed by Cadmius - how could he be like this?  
  
"They're surface level, they'll ache and hurt but nothing needs to happen, just clean my cheek a little. It doesn't feel big enough to scar, but it can get infected,"   
  
Sandor was a little annoyed that you didn't even flinch from the sting of alcohol, the way he had, granted it was so much smaller than what you had to clean on him, and you didn't even need paste to dull the pain.   
  
"What were you doing? What were you  _thinking?"_  
  
Why, why was he talking at you like you were crazy? You furrowed your brow, maybe he didn't understand fully what was happening out there. You explained it as simply as one explained the weather, the shift of the tides, or movement of the sun.  
  
"I asked Cadmius - the coal boy - what was happening, he told me it was about - God - it was about  _food storage,_ nobody was buying food, they were collecting, have you noticed how cheap the rooms are here? Who charges a single coin? Gold or no?"  
  
Sandor didn't say anything, brow furrowed. So you explained, as best you could, that commerce had left Blackhaven in an effort to purge the divide of the classes, which has resulted in a melt down, unknowingly reinforced by the Lord who should be presiding and maintaining order - Beric. Heart was in the right place, of course, and equity was a nice idea, in practice? It was a mess.  
  
  
"I don't understand why you were carrying the man's beam,"  
  
Oh.  
  
That was all he wanted to know, not the other stuff.  
  
  
"Because he's being persecuted for storing food for his family, his wife is sick, Lord Turias tells me she lost a child from this regime - not able to get enough food to feed them all and maintain herself in sickness, they're pelting him and making him carry wood until his knees break or he's pelted to death and you're asking me why I helped? Why wouldn't I?"  
  
And he stared at you, unsure of what to say, what the Hell do you say in the face of something so good, when you yourself are not?  
  
"Don't do something like that again," he settled on.  
  
"I can't promise that," you said, with a certain steeliness to your eyes that he found too attractive in the moment, before clearing his throat, looking again in your bag, just so he wouldn't have to look at you. He couldn't stand that bruise on you - because it shouldn't be there.   
  
"So the coal boy, he just came to you?"   
  
You nodded, and he looked ready to say something, before pushing it aside. No, you'd had enough crazy shit for one day, he decided. He gave you a worn-out "I'm-exasperated-with-you," look - the sort you'd become accustomed to, and he dropped it.  
  
"I'll ask them to bring a hot bath up, if it'll help the bruises," he said, and you were again, surprised by his kindness, but did not protest.  In fact, him being the big man that he was, he even carried it, but when he came back to the room, he saw you on the bed, and froze.   
  
"You're right, I'm hurt,"  
  
\----  
  
Sandor had to blink a few times after he shut the door behind him, carrying a wood basin of pumped, boiled water, that only took a few more pales to fill totally, which was good, it was all he could focus on. He meant to just leave it there then busy himself in the bar with the cheap drink, he didn't expect you to get started while the bath prep was being done. He came in and saw you on the bed with your clothes at the foot of it, wrapped in the sheet, it pressing around every curve of your body. He inhaled sharply, and didn't comment.  
  
"There's more bruises than I thought," you said quietly, walking over to the basin and slipping your feet in first. Sandor turned his back away, though he really didn't want to, but he felt like he owed you it.  
  
You stepped in it and threw the sheet off, shuddering at how hot it was. You liked how hot it was, like it absorbed a lot of the pain you were currently feeling.  
  
You drew your knees up to your chest, to cover yourself, and cleared your throat, and kept doing it until you saw him turn around.  
  
"I feel some on my back, but I can't see them. Could you tell me how bad it is, and maybe..." you swallowed thickly "-wash my hair?" you would have moved your arms, but you had to do it slowly, and gestured to the bruises on the back of your left shoulder and on your right bicep.  
  
"Because even though I can manage, it hurts, and um, I figure you owe me, considering how much I looked after you when you were all laid up,"  you said, trying to justify it - to make it seem like enough, and it was. His shadow fell over you in an all-encompassing mass, and it only made you remember how he carried you up there in the first place.  
  
"If they pelted you as hard as they pelted that man, they could have killed you, you crazy cunt," sighed Sandor, who was willing his hands to stay firm, and strong. He didn't think he'd be doing this in his wildest dreams, but he was - he could feel his face and neck getting warm, and he couldn't tea his eyes away.  
  
"I don't go down so easily, I mean, maybe you're correct, but I'm strong, just because I don't look it, don't mistake me for weak," you said softly, tilting your head to your right shoulder. "-We can't all be like you,"   
  
  
"Like me?"  Sandor lightly, he scooped some water in a scoop that had come with the wash materials, and lightly poured some over your hair. "-The bruise is lower on your back, not surprised you can't see it by the way,"  
  
"Cadmius told me the stories, about you, I mean." you said with a deep sigh, and then there was silence. "-I asked, because he was little when your brother pillaged the Riverlands. I thought maybe, I dunno...you've seen this place? That'd be related,"  
  
"But one sacking, no matter how brutal, couldn't have set Blackhaven back so many years, but while we were chatting, he told me about - some of the stuff you - you've done. The stories,"  
  
You waited for him to deny it.  
  
"Whatever you heard, it's probably true,"  
  
You looked up at him, just as he poured water on your hair, it landed in your eyes and down your face, but you didn't flinch, You gave him a glassy look while coating your naked flesh with your legs that it could have burned in his mind forever. He didn't apologise, he just looked at you, with the scoop in hand, looking like he'd been caught bang to rights, but not even slightly bothered by it.  
  
"All I can say is, I'm not as bad as my brother, but that hardly wins me any prizes, does it, little fox?"  
  
Oh, that name again. The warm inside feeling.  
  
"No I suppose it doesn't, but you don't rape, you haven't hurt me - you've had a lot of opportunities. You haven't been a nice man, but you're not the worst," you said, quietly. You kept on looking at him, and gasped softly when he put his hands - his large hands - in you hair, and was gently rinsing, with a gentleness you didn't know he had.  "Why don't you tell me why you're not so bad? All I've heard about you the last hour is bad things,"  
  
"I'm not a good person, I don't do good things, I don't carry people's pyres neither," he paused "-but I've saved people. Like you, today. I don't do it a lot, but I have. Don't make me good though. I've killed kids, but never babies. That don't make me good neither. I've never raped, but I'm a whoremonger, cos who else would fuck a great ugly bastard like me without the coin to see it through?"  
  
"That's enough. I'm not that great either," you sighed, shaking your head a little, feeling your heart skip so many beats. You had him, you were unclothed. You had so much time to think, and it was all coming to a head now. The port was so close, it was all so close, it seemed like fate was making you stop in the one place in Westeros that could make you stay, with a man who stayed with you out of necessity because he had no links in the place he wanted to go. It could all end - and if you chose to stay here, and make a claim to your name, Sandor could just keep on going.  
  
Nothing real kept you together, camaraderie or not, and it hurt to put it that way.  
  
"But you're wrong, you're not a great ugly bastard, just a great....bastard," you flashed him a cheeky smirk, and he actually returned it, and that warm feeling spread again. "And if I didn't trust you, or like you, or anything like that, I wouldn't let you sleep beside me, or touch me like this, when you could just wring my neck, like a fresh caught rabbit," murmuring softly.  
  
You felt his hands around your neck at that, but they didn't squeeze, it was like he was stroking, and he went to your shoulders, and started rubbing, not saying anything for a moment.   
  
"And I'm thinking I might stay here, make my claim, these people - they're suffering, and I don't know if I can do anything, but I took an oath, to help people - and, I have to try," you turned to look up at him again "-same reason I saved you,"  
  
"Because of that I promised I'd get you to Essos, if you stay in this shitehole..." Sandor trailed off, and all was quiet.   
  
"You don't have to stay," you said " _-but I want you to,"_ adding that quickly - and then regretting it, because you didn't have a cool statement to play that off with, except that you didn't truly want to be alone in this foreign land, or anywhere, really - and then it was awkward.  
  
"Because," you furrowed your brow, but you big, quicksmart brain, so good for lying - enough to be called a fox, could never seem to lie to this man, not with ease, it was so hard, like your heart wanted to fall out of your ass and then some, and you could almost feel your mother's frown from beyond the grave at you but God, you could lie to the whole wide world except yourself, and this man.  
  
"Because," you repeated, the lump in your throat grew, and his stare was expectant.   
  
You'd almost said 'because I don't want to be alone' or 'I'd be scared', perhaps even 'I'd miss you' - all would be true, but the worst thing came out, because it was none of those things.  
  
"I know nothing of Westerosi politics, and I may need to," you settled on, sounding pleading, tying to take some comfort in this adult touch, this almost sensuous experience. This was like a dream come true, you didn't even think that that "I took care of you, now you do me," card would even work, but it was amazing.   
  
"I don't know that much I'm a fighter, not a politician," he finally said, his voice, as quiet as you'd ever heard it "I haven't made a decision any--ah-- _oh,"_  
  
You swallowed your nerves, and unfurled yourself, standing in the hot basin of water, back turned to Sandor, hearing his breathe quicken as your hair dripped down your back and the cool air raised goosebumps on all the part of you that weren't submerged.  
  
"You're a big fucker and I still have use for you,"  you said firmly, and just like that it felt like some tension drained.  
  
"You know I have a bounty on my head, right?"  
  
You couldn't help it at that, and turned around in disbelief, giving him a face full of your naked breasts and body, another sharp inhale followed but you couldn't say you particularly cared in that moment.  
  
"And who in their right mind would even try to fucking collect it?" you were too flabbergasted that it was even brought up as an issue. He snorted at your reply, and turned to pick up a sheet and put it around you. His face was half turned when he pulled the material over your front in some hammy attempt to not look as brazen as he usually was with staring. Mostly because he already had an erection that could probably cut through limestone right then and would prefer if you absolutely did not look down, and mimicked his own body language.  
  
You didn't know how to resist the urge anymore  - fuck it, fuck it, it was now or never, do or die.  
  
"Stop making excuses, you're better than that," you breathed quickly, hands reaching up to his shoulders - such a large man he was - and Gods was your statement hypocritical. You couldn't even tell him you wanted him to stay because - why? Fear? It could all just fall apart anyway, when you make a claim - if you do....   
  
 _Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it_ \- his face as so close, even as tall as he was.  
  
He turned his head back to face you when you had put your wet hands on his shoulders and that was enough, you hoisted yourself onto your tiptoes using his body as support and smashed your lips to his.  
  
The sheet fell off again, you didn't care.  
  
It was clumsy and you brushed noses a little, he'd gasped against you and you felt his massive hands at both of your naked hips. He didn't fight it, but he didn't push back either, he was stunned mostly.   
  
An apology was on the tip of your tongue, until you let out a small shriek instead, feeling him lift you with all of his tremendous strength. Sandor remained muted and silent, and that had scared you, until he set you down on the bed, and pulled the sheet back off the floor.  
  
"You can't do that," he groused, his tone almost agitated, eyes not looking at you.   
  
You were mortified. You'd kissed him and that was his response. The butterflies in your stomach had felt like they were all dying, one by one. Your face burned and you crossed your arms over your naked chest like you wanted just to hide from everything. Or turn back to exactly a moment ago and not kiss the man.   
  
There was some relief then, when Sandor pulled the sheet up on the bed and he climbed into bed beside you.  
  
"Why?"   
  
You swallowed thickly, and felt to embarrassed to say anything, he didn't need to elaborate on the question either, you just sat in a tense silence, bruised body aching, and ego hurting.  
  
He gave you an irritated look - like he wanted an answer and muted silence would not cut it.  
  
 _"Because.... I wanted to?"_ you said lamely, wincing internally. So much for a build up. What a shit confession.  
  
"You can't just _do that!_ " he snapped again, now more agitated than before and you flinched involuntarily and it was a response that lit Sandor's memory to when he'd snarled at you for cauterising his wound. He softened now, but his expression did not betray this fact even slightly.  
  
"Girl, you can't kiss me like that when I'm this hard," his tone deep and brimming with annoyance mixed with something else. "I'll go from wanting to needin',"  
  
Your head snapped up - did you just hear that correctly?  
  
He didn't repeat himself, and you so desperately wanted him to, instead, you did the next best thing you could do, and spoke to him on the assumption that he had in fact, said what he'd said.  
  
" _Did I do that?"_ you breathed, your ears burning.  
  
Sandor stared at you, you stared right back, hand picking at the sheet he'd pulled up on both of you, and as if on automatic, you had tossed it weakly so it revealed both your legs and stopped at Sandor's knees. You swallowed thickly at the sight.  
  
If Sandor wasn't going to talk, you were just going to look.  
  
Finally -  _finally -_ you had noticed the erection he was sporting through the cottons his was wearing. You felt the embarrassment rise - and that was saying something, as you were the one naked as the day you wee born, tits out and all. But you were staring, seeing this large thick tent that outlined a girthy member through his clothes, pressed against the upper right of his waist.   
                                                                                                                                                                                              If he was unnerved by your scrutinising, he did not say. There was a large, dark patch around his crotch and at first glance seemed like he'd soiled himself until you saw a bead of clear fluid at the outline of where the tip of his erection would be. It oozed with a marginally different consistency and you flushed brightly. The man was leaking precum like a fucking water pump and it was making an uncomfortable, tingling sensation start to burn between your thighs.  
  
"Aye, you did," he sighed heavily with what you supposed was lust, or at least. hoped that it was, as he crudely adjusted himself.  
                                                
It took a moment for you to register what he said, and you turned a deeper shade. He froze when he saw your hand inching near, almost trembling. The Hound inhaled sharply, he didn't expect you to respond to his crudeness - to want to do anything to him at all, but he'd been thrown for a loop when you'd kissed him. He could almost feel the heat radiating from you now, his eyes drunk in your naked body without abandon now, considering your hand was now resting on his inner thigh.  He didn't move his attention until he felt a shy finger popping the few buttons of his pants.  
  
You swallowed thickly as his cock remained pushed against his thigh, released from the loose, damp constraint. The sensation of heat that had plunged south rose several notches. This wasn't a shy sneak from your peripheral vision while he pissed into the grassland behind the horse, this was a full on viewing and you couldn't help the soft murmur of surprise and shyness. It was hot. Really hot. But you couldn't help yourself.  
  
 _"God above, you'd split me in half,"_ you said, shyly, he chuckled despite himself and smirked when he felt your tender hand, trembles and all - curl around his cock. He knew the bruises on your arms made it hurt to move them so much but it felt like his heartbeat had plunged all the way down to his dick, which was being so nicely held, that he couldn't bare the thought of telling you not to touch him. If it wasn't being touched, it was going to ache and throb with the need to be touched and it was everything he thought about when his eyes closed.  
  
"I wouldn't hurt you," his words dragged out in a heady whisper "-I'd work you over for half the night and then some if I ha--  _ah-_ d ta..." his hips rolled up into your hand, voice crackling slightly as you pulled his member to your direction. You marvelled at how it felt in your hand for a moment - so thick and utterly taken by its throbbing, the fact it was running clear precum down your fingers. The trembling was slowing as you moved your hand up and down he length of it, foreskin completely unsheathing him and revealing how almost sore with arousal the head of his cock was, with such an intense redness that you found yourself gently rubbing over the slit with the flat of your thumb as though to caress it's swollen soreness, unaware of all the things it was doing to Sandor in that moment.   
  
He shuddered deeply, he practically purred - and it was all you.   
  
"It's all in the arm movement little fox," he breathed, a half-lidded stare directed southward to your delicate hand.  
  
You flushed, and focused on moving your arm a little more, jerking him off with a slow but firm pace, your own aching shoulder raising and falling as you did. The warmth in you was burning now and you could feel it in your crotch, your mouth moving without your brain's approval.  
  
"Work me over how?" was this dirty talk? If it was, it didn't feel nearly as silly in practice as it did otherwise - you wanted to know what Sandor would do to you -  _needed -_ to know.  
  
He turned his head to you and saw that need in your eyes and his own large left hand made it's way onto your naked leg, trying to prise a gap with which to slip it in.  
  
"I'll show you, if you'll let me,"   
  
And God, he barely finished the sentence before you opened your legs apart just enough. You were blushing stupidly now, Your lip trembled, and your whole body tensed as you felt a thick finger pressing against the outer walls of your pussy. You were almost embarrassed by the fact he was immediately greeted with wetness, and shivered as he started moving it rhythmically up and down, gathering a thick layer of transparent moisture around his finger, just so it wouldn't hurt, though he was near certain he could have slid inside easily with how aroused you had been. He was careful, so careful, but the sensation of that large digit inside of you just had you ache for more and so you'd whimpered, and pumped Sandor faster.  
  
"I can do more..." god, who knew The Hound could be so - so _hot..._ pushing in a second finger without abandon, hitting the sweet spot above your entrance with his knuckle that just amplified all of the tingles as his hand moved eagerly and so needily wanted another finger - but his hand was just so large, and baths could dry a girl out and fight the natural wetness the body tries to make, and you were just so small seeming....  
  
"I can give you things you didn't even know you wanted," he breathed - and that was enough, your legs spreading apart as much as you had space on the bed to do. You almost begged to have him split you in half with the cock you were pumping delicately. But he couldn't even get another finger in! You whimpered as much.   
  
He told you to stop touching him, regretfully so, but he did, because he felt like he could have nutted right there and then if you didn't stop.   
  
Sandor ached with want, but he willed you to sink down into the bed, not on the headboard, and pulling his fingers out made you sigh deeply.  
  
"Trust me," he says, with a wolfish smirk, and positions himself so that he's between your legs on all fours. He stripped his shirt to free him from the sweat. You ogled his broad chest for a moment, and were too horny in this moment to be embarrassed of such a close inspection of your womanly parts, but you looked at him and shivered when you felt him occasionally drip on your leg, before he locked eyes with you, and you felt your mouth fall open before you could control it.  
  
" _Ah - ah. wh-what're you- oh my God, you're--"_ the babbles were in shock, because Sandor Clegane had lowered his face right between your legs and was licking around the entrance of your pussy and lapping all you had to offer up like a dog starved of water.  
  
You were stuck in shock that he was eating you out, and doing it so fervently, it was so hot - holy fuck - you had your shaking hands at the back of his head and were riding his tongue, directing it to make circles around your entrance, to tease the bump of your clit. You closed your eyes because it was too much to look at - too many sensations to associate with the man you found so handsome without cumming desperately. You were directing him between panting and squealing pathetically, humming with delight as you felt him breathing into you between shoving his tongue inside of you.   
  
In a moment you were extremely aware of everything you liked about Sandor - his firm shoulders, the way his hair felt after it was washed - which your fingers were now needfully playing with between each noise you made. The way he would take his lower lip into his mouth and wet it when he was mulling something over, The way he could lift your entire body up and pulled you painlessly onto horseback with ease. How protective he could be, his coarse humour, his bark-like laugh --  
  
  
 _"I love you --"_ you panted, and he didn't stop, he just lifted his head, an inscrutable look in his face as his tongue didn't stop, your hand plunged his head back own with needy force, as if to say  _don't you dare stop._ He was taken by it, he'd never felt so desired, and in truth, you hadn't registered what you'd said. It was safe to say your mind wasn't working, you had decades of denying your womanhood to make up for.  
  
You were closer to him than anyone at this moment in time. You'd tell him everything, damn the consequences, making all sorts of decisions in the heat of passion.  
  
He stopped, and raised himself so he was descending over you, his face leering over yours, he was so much taller that he was more in the pillow than close to you, but you had access to his neck and his shoulders and parts of his chest.   
Not before you held the rough side of his face, and not before he groped at your chest merely to relish in it.  
  
He slid inside of you firmly, and suddenly you couldn't get enough air, it was a seamless and smooth in transition and true to promise, Sandor didn't hurt you, not even slightly, as you were told it should hurt. He was reaching places that took so long - preparation and teasing and often unreached because of how petrified you were of being caught by someone who knew you to be a man. The entirety of his cock pleasurably jacketed within you was enough to have you moaning into his neck. Hands finding their way into parts of his hair and the roughness of where he was burned, where he'd comb his hair over to cover, as nothing would grow there.   
  
Sandor was thrusting himself into a frenzy - forgetting you now because you were reaching orgasm and riding it out all over his cock as he felt the twinge in his gut and the screaming need. The inn must have heard you both because your sounds were mingling with his and you turned into a shaking mess as he gave a final slow motion, emptying himself inside of you and then some.   
  
His moan was low and rough, an he slid himself out with a paced nature, before beaching himself beside you,covered in a fine sheen of sweat, as you were. Sandor said nothing when you slowly rolled over, putting your face into his chest for once, like it was a silent agreement that neither of you would say anything until you both caught your breath.  You were still trembling a bit, at least from the waist down, clearly it had been a while, and finally, you spoke.  
  
"I want you," simple, sweet and blunt.  
  
He gave you a rather shocked an put-out look in reply.  
  
"You're going to need to give it more than a few minutes Little Fox,"  
  
You went a funny shade of red again as your normal colour had began to return in the wake of you afterglow, and pathetically hit him in the arm - which, he didn't even feel.  
  
"No I meant, I don't want to share," you warbled out nervously, throat slightly hoarse from all the noises you'd ended up making. "I meant I want you and I don't want to share because I'm shit at it,"  
  
"I thought....I thought maybe I made that clear,"  
  
"I assumed mostly 'cos I was tongue deep and eating your pussy like roast on Sunday," he replied bluntly. You were mortified at how he could be joking after what you'd just done, or that you were attempting to pour you heart out. It occurred to you then that he was no better at this than you, and he was only doing what he knew how to do. You swallowed thickly, and put a clammy hand to his disfigurement, thumb tracing over his cheek delicately - he stared back at you with those dark eyes of his.  
  
 _"I think you're the most beautiful man in Westeros and I'm not going to share,"_ your heady whisper, even in your embarrassment, broached no room for argument. You'd all but hissed at him, you weren't going to repeat yourself.  
  
Silence.   
  
"I think your orgasm left ya blind, 'm an ugly fucker," he said in a quiet, rumbling tone, you corrected him instantly, sweetly, as you had before.  
  
"No, just a fucker," a lazy half-smile on your face, you kissed him on he lips anyway, even though you could faintly taste yourself. You kissed him properly and it was everything you wanted and he seemed surprised that you'd even do it after he'd gone down on you, but melted into it all the same. He relished in it, because he'd seen people kiss like this and didn't think he'd ever be on the receiving end of one.  
  
"I'll tell you anything you want to know in the morning I promise," you breathed, a healthy but content flush in your cheeks.  
  
"Aye," said Sandor, before yawning tiredly - you'd exhausted him, truly. Like no one ever had.  "Get some sleep, we still have some night hours left,"

  
Your body complied almost instantly, and you dreamed the sweet words - or assumed you had anyway - ' _I'm all yours'.  
  
  
_


End file.
